Naiya and her fellow Naethari have killed Edward Pierce and gained their freedom, but there are others who want the Naethari for their own ends. Can they keep their hard-won freedom?
“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.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
I had almost fallen asleep with Maddie held tightly in my arms when I heard movement outside the motel room door. As soon as I heard the telltale signs of someone trying to jimmy the lock, I reached for Maddie’s gun and held my breath as I watched the door. The lock clicked, the door slowly opened, and I lowered the gun and let my breath out in relief as Mom’s familiar voice called out, “Naiya?”
“Here, Mom,” I replied with a sniffle as all of the stress from the night seemed to hit me at once. Tears clouded my eyes as she came into the room with her medical bag and Dad followed her inside. “M-maddie’s in pretty bad shape. Can you give her something for the pain? I ha.. I had to give her my blood. I was afraid I was gonna lose her.”
Mom was immediately at Maddie’s side prepping an injection of morphine while Dad came and wrapped his arms around me. “It’s okay, Naiya, you did what you had to do. Think carefully, were you followed?”
I shook my head but didn’t relinquish my grip on my sister, she needed to remain in close proximity to a Naethari until the changes were complete if she was going to survive and become one of us. “I don’t think we were followed, but I was tired and I’m about ready to pass out. I used every trick that you taught us and switched vehicles to be sure, but I’m not as experienced as Maddie and I was running short on time with feet to drive with,” I admitted.
“We checked for any signs of physical surveillance on this room and the motel before coming in, so I think you managed to shake anyone who might have been tailing you, I just wanted to make sure that you took precautions,” Dad told me gently as he caressed my cheek. “We’re going to have to strip Maddie down and check for any tracking devices or other forms of electronic surveillance though. Once you’re both clear, we’ll take you somewhere secure, and then I want you to tell us everything that you remember about your encounter, even if you don’t think it could be important.”
As Dad spoke to me, Maddie’s breathing became less labored and her body relaxed some. I nodded, having expected such precautions and then Dad went to go watch for trouble from the window, pulling out his secure phone. A moment later he asked, “Any sign of trouble, Jack?”
I was too focused on helping Mom get Maddie undressed to listen further. I was already naked since I had blood all over me and the clothes I had been wearing would have been too tight on my unshifted form anyway. Mom clucked in concern at the blood-soaked bandages on my sister and went to change them. The bullet wound was already mostly closed and had stopped bleeding, so it seemed like my blood was doing the job.
“It looks like she’s out of the woods, at least as far as the gunshot is concerned,” Mom said with a relieved sigh as she examined the wound. “Gut shots like that can be fatal if not tended to quickly and properly If not from the wound bleeding out, then by sepsis. You most likely saved your sister’s life with your quick actions and by doing what you needed to, Naiya. We’ll need to keep a close eye on her and keep one of you girls close at all times though, from what Kieshala has told me of the process. So we’ll need to lay low for a bit.”
Once she was finished properly bandaging Maddie’s wound again, Mom pulled out a bug sweeper, running it over Maddie, then me, and finally our clothes and purses. I was very relieved when there were no telltale beeps. I still felt the need to ask for confirmation though. “We’re clean?”
Mom nodded and sighed in relief as she said, “They probably didn’t want to get too close while observing you, it would have tipped Maddie off. They couldn’t plant anything directly on you until your encounter with them, and with her injured and you seemingly a teenage girl, they were probably confident of your capture by then so there would have been no need. They likely put something in the SUV while you were shopping though, so it was a good call switching vehicles like you did and leaving everything behind.”
“Do you think someone gave us up?” I asked. “Maddie seemed to think they found her through facial recognition or something. They knew who she was, they made a point of calling her Erica Winslow and using her real name. That means that they’re probably looking for us Naethari. Maddie said that the whole operation stank of black ops, and these guys were American, not locals.”
“She was probably right,” Dad said as he returned from the window. “If it was a covert military operation then they wouldn’t have wasted money on local informants if they already knew Maddie and Natalie’s last known location. It would be much easier to access the local CCTV and traffic cameras than to find someone with information that they could buy. Informants would be a last resort, especially in Cuba.”
“They probably have an informant though,” Mom suggested with a frown. “Someone who knows about you girls, but that could be any of Pierce’s surviving guards or anyone who had access to the lab or Pierce’s private network before we destroyed it. We can discuss that later, once we get to the safe house.”
“Safe house? Why don’t we just leave? You have all of the medical supplies that you wanted. Even if we don’t have enough food supplies, Kieshala has been teaching us how to hunt and gather edible food from the ocean. We could survive on that if we had to.” I didn’t like the thought of someone trying to take away our freedom again, and I wanted to put as much distance between them and us as possible.
“No, Naiya,” Mom said softly as she took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know that your instincts are probably telling you to get away, but that is the first thing that they will be expecting us to try after what happened tonight. If they know about you girls, then they will probably be watching the ports and since they know about Maddie, then they probably have pictures and dossiers on the rest of us too. We’ll have to lay low while we try to get some more definitive information on who might be after us, why, and how to make them never fuck with us again.”
As exhausted as I was, I managed to shift and give myself legs for long enough to carry Maddie outside to the bright yellow crew cab pickup. The idea was that the people after us would be expecting us to flee and try to keep a low profile. Our enemies would be expecting us to try to blend in with non-descript vehicles, so we were going to have to break a few of the normal rules and stand out to escape their notice. I had muttered that the only thing that would stand out more was a muscle car and Dad had only said that he was working on it.
It wasn’t easy getting Maddie in the back of that big truck, but I managed it and wrapped us both up in the blankets in the back seat. I was so tired then that I fell asleep for the drive to our new safehouse, clutching Maddie tightly in my arms as we lay in the back seat. It wasn’t comfortable but after the stressful night that I had, I was so exhausted that comfort mattered very little.
Dad said that it was going to take a while to get to our destination anyway. He and Uncle Jack had to plot out a route that would avoid any traffic or CCTV cameras, so a direct route was out of the question. Still, it didn’t feel like I had gotten near enough sleep when Mom’s voice called out insistently, “Naiya, we’re here.”
‘Here’ turned out to be the same villa that we had been staying at since arriving in Cuba. “Umm… I thought we were going to a safe house?” I asked sleepily as I tried to focus enough to shift my tail back into a pair of legs.
“It’s probably as safe as we’re going to get,” Mom replied as she opened the passenger side door and got out. Once she had opened mine as well so I could try and maneuver Maddie and me out of the truck, she added. “They’ll be expecting us to bolt and they’ll be watching the ports and coastlines for that, but if they knew where we were then they would have already hit us here instead of risking going after you and Maddie in a public place. You girls need water access and this place has the pool and ocean access, and this little lagoon is surrounded by cliffs and mostly shielded from view from the open ocean unless you’re looking for it.”
“We’ll stay here for now, and Jack, Carmen, and I will be making some improvements to the security perimeter in case they do find us. If that happens, we’ll have to fight them off and make a break for the open ocean,” Dad put in. “Jack thinks it’ll be best if those of us who could be recognized by facial recognition avoid the city as much as possible, so we’ll be counting on you to gather supplies and information, Naiya.”
“Yeah, can I sleep first?” I asked as I managed to shift back to my Naiya with legs form, slid out of the cab, and gently pulled Maddie into my grip.
“Of course, hon,” Mom assured me as she put an arm around my shoulders to steady me. “We need to make some plans first. A lot will depend on what you can tell us about what happened during your encounter with those soldiers.”
We took Maddie to her room, where Kieshala was already waiting on the bed. Someone must have thought to phone ahead and warn everyone about the situation. I was just glad that someone was thinking because I hadn’t really been doing a good job of that since I had contacted Kara earlier to tell her what had happened and where we were waiting, I had been too worried about Maddie, too stressed out, and too tired.
“I am glad to see you both alive, Naiya,” Kieshala said with a weak smile.
“I… I’m not sure if I did it right, I just kinda went with what I remembered you telling us and then hoped for the best,” I admitted as I laid my sister gently on the bed beside the elder Naethari.
~ You did fine, Naiya. She is changing and your close presence and skin-to-skin contact have allowed her to absorb your primal energy and kept her changes stable. I will hold her and sleep with her until morning and Jenny will take over after breakfast. You must get some proper rest with your mate after your ordeal. ~ It wasn’t quite an order, more like the insistent urging of a concerned and slightly overbearing older sister.
Over the next few minutes, Mom made several trips back and forth to bring in IV bags, a stand for them, an oxygen tank and mask, and various medical monitors and equipment. Then she began carefully inserting or attaching them to Maddie as needed. Despite her focus on the tasks and trying not to let her emotions distract her from doing what needed to be done, she was worried, and I couldn’t blame her.
Maddie was her daughter, and she had almost lost her tonight. I was her daughter too, and she probably would have reacted the same way if it were me lying there, but Maddie was her actual flesh and blood, the girl that she had given birth to. Watching her running around and trying to stay calm, cool, and collected while seeing to the immediate medical needs of that daughter left a burning ache of guilt in my chest.
If I hadn’t been complaining and acting so distracted because it was a little hot, I probably would have noticed our attackers myself. Naethari senses are much better than those of a human. If I had only been paying proper attention, Maddie wouldn’t have needed to take the bullet meant for me. So I was in a somber mood as Aunt Carmen came and ushered me out of the room so Mom could work without me in the way.
“Come, Sirenita,” she said as she picked me up in her powerful arms. “You should be resting in the pool, you can worry about your sister just as well there. No blaming yourself either, you’re not used to this life like the rest of us are. You thought that you were safe, and nobody will blame you for not seeing something that none of us saw coming either. Once your mamá is done we will need to debrief you on what happened, and then you can get some proper rest.
It was my first debriefing and they didn’t do it gently, they couldn’t afford to with all of our lives possibly on the line. Dad, Mom, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen had me tell them what happened from the beginning, and then wanted to know every detail that I could remember. They wanted to know the weapons and gear that our opponents had, down to the model if I could remember them. I did remember some of that stuff, especially with the guns since I had been training with Maddie since we were kids.
My memory was a little better as a Naethari too and I was able to remember details and model numbers that I would have thought long forgotten after a year of not having them drilled into my head. I hadn’t had any time to take off their helmets or the masks underneath to identify any of them, but other than that, they all thought I took care of the situation the best that I could under the circumstances. After all, Maddie was still alive and things could have gone a lot worse.
Going by the information that I was able to provide, on our attackers’ gear, the way they talked, their accents, and other details, they were relatively sure that Maddie was right and they were some sort of American black ops team, probably working for someone in military R&D. As for who had tipped them off about us ‘mermaids’, it could have been Dr. Harris, one of his lab assistants, or any of Pierce’s guards who had stayed in the states to help clean up his messes like good lackeys.
It didn’t really change our game plan, one way or the other, though. Mom was going to keep monitoring Maddie while one of us Naethari was with her at all times. Dad and Aunt Carmen would be helping Uncle Jack to improve security and to do some research on who in military R&D might be interested enough in mermaids to send a team after Maddie. I would probably be the busiest of us all though.
I would be doing all of the legwork and meetups for information under different guises, in addition to buying supplies and doing any number of other things that needed to be done outside of the safety of the safe house. We couldn’t afford to risk any of the others being seen and picked up by a camera or something, those of us with legs anyway. As the only one who could both walk and not be identified, all of that was going to fall on me.
It wasn’t until I was safe in the pool and Kara’s arms and trying to get some much-needed sleep that I finally broke down from what had been a very emotional and physically taxing night. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for Maddie nearly dying. What I had done to those men was taking a toll on my mind and heart as well.
It wasn’t that I felt guilty, they had fucked with me and my sister and were trying to take away our hard-earned freedom so they deserved death and a bit of pain. I just found myself regretting that I couldn’t have done more to get them off our backs and I was worried about what might happen the next time I encountered a team like theirs. I knew in my heart that there would indeed be a next time, it couldn’t be avoided with the places I was probably going to be sticking my nose into, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I needed to be better when that time came, ready for anything, and I needed to find a way to keep them off our backs for good.
Finally, those thoughts faded as exhaustion overcame my sudden case of nerves and I fell asleep in Kara’s arms. My nightmares that night were harsh reflections of what had happened and all the ways that it could have possibly gone wrong. In many of those visions Maddie died, and we Naethari were captured and enslaved once again. I lost Kara, they took our babies away for experimentation, and we were some kind of sideshow attraction. It felt like I spent more time waking up crying and screaming than actually sleeping by the time I was too mentally exhausted to even dream anymore and fell into a deep sleep.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
When I awoke, it was just me and Kara in the pool and my mate was working on her tail and fin exercises. She quickly abandoned them to wrap me up in her arms and kiss me lovingly though. ~ Feeling any better this morning, my love? ~ she asked as she pulled away. It wasn’t hard to see the concern in her eyes, or hear it in her mind voice.
~ I am as good as I can be, considering what happened last night, ~ I told her with a shaky smile. ~ Better now that I have gotten some sleep, but I am worried about my sister, and how we are all going to get out of this mess. ~
~ For now, we are going to all lay low, ~ Kara replied with a shrug. ~ It does not really change much for us, except that we will have to be more careful about leaving the lagoon to hunt for food. We were talking about maybe avoiding the open water altogether until this is dealt with. Kieshala does not like it, but even she agrees that it might be best for now. ~
I nodded as I considered the problem with a somewhat clear mind. ~ If they are looking for us, and they think that Maddie and Nat are hiding us somewhere, then they likely have someone watching the local spots where someone could be hiding us. Like, they will probably be looking at abandoned swimming pools, motels with pools, water treatment plants, and such. They may be watching the fish markets and stuff too if they think we are reliant on fresh fish and seaweed like we were being fed in Pierce’s bunker of horrors. Sure, it’s probably the best for us, but we can eat whatever normal humans eat too. ~
~ If their insider is someone who was working with Pierce, then it is a good thing that Nat deliberately left out the fact that we can eat other stuff in her reports, ~ my lover agreed.
Once Natalie had found out exactly what and who we were, she had been deliberately altering her reports to Pierce to make it seem like while we were clever, we still had similar needs and dietary restrictions as other marine mammals. She had been trying to keep Pierce and those in his employ from figuring out how smart and adaptable we really were, but I hadn’t thought it would do much good beyond our time as Pierce’s captives. In fact, when Kara and I had been separated from the others during our first mating heat, she had said that we were sick with a cough and fever and were displaying heightened aggression. She had suggested a human virus that had mutated or ingesting human food as possible causes.
With that in mind, it would be best if we avoided the fish markets, even if I would really miss my daily shrimp. I probably could get some at grocery stores, even if it wouldn’t be as fresh. The problem was that we were probably going to be running low on food soon since we had been planning to leave here in a day or two. All of our supplies for the trip had to be abandoned last night and we didn’t have much left here at the villa. So it looked like I was going to have to do some grocery shopping soon since I was the only one who could go out in public without the risk of being recognized.
I wasn’t looking forward to going out into that heat by myself and doing that, but the others would be depending on me. I needed to push training my aetral harder anyway though, both of them, and having to shift repeatedly and for long periods of time would probably help with that. I sighed, but nodded. ~ Speaking of food, is there anything left for me to have for breakfast? And where is Kieshala? I thought that she’d be here with us once Jenny took over for her with Maddie. ~
~ Yeah, Babe, we still have enough seafood for a meal or two in the fridge, and I know that you love the shrimp, so I saved my share of that for you. I had more oysters instead. Kieshala left with Nat after we had breakfast. She is going to start Nat’s transformation process, ~ Kara replied.
~ Thanks, my love, you are too good to me, ~ I said with a smile as I kissed her. ~ Wait, she is going to turn Nat now? ~
~Yeah, we were originally planning on turning two at a time anyway and if they’re both in the same bed, then one of us can just lay between them and keep physical contact with both until it is time to move Maddie into the pool. Nat will not be too far behind her, and she wanted to do it now since Maddie is already going through the process. They wanted to do it together, ~ she explained.
~ Yeah, Maddie was telling me that last night. ~ That was before all hell broke loose and we had just been a pair of sisters enjoying a day out together, even if I had been complaining about the heat a lot. I found myself sighing again as I admitted, ~ I guess it won’t make too much of a difference if one or both of them are out of the picture for a bit since none of you can actually go anywhere anyway. We will just have to hope that we can stay under the radar until they are both recovered and can swim under their own power. Well, I guess I will go check on them and then eat since I probably have a busy day ahead of me. ~
~ I would come with you, but your mom does not want us crowding the patients any more than necessary since they both need proper rest. ~
I leaned in to give her a parting kiss. ~Well, you are only a thought away, my love. ~ Then I got up and swam to the edge of the pool to climb out and shift my tail into a pair of legs and don the pink bathrobe that I usually wore around the villa when I was roaming around the house. I had gotten to the point where I didn’t mind being topless in front of others, but I felt that when I had legs I should keep what laid between them somewhat covered.
As hungry as I was, checking on my sister and Nat was my first priority, so I headed straight to Maddie’s bedroom with a purposeful stride. Once I was there, I gave the door a gentle tap before opening it to step inside the busy room. Jenny was laying on the big bed between Maddie and Natalie and was making sure to keep at least a hand on my sister to maintain physical contact. Nat and my sister were both covered with paper gowns to maintain their modesty and Mom was currently hooking Natalie up to the second IV and other medical equipment.
Maddie was looking better than last night, but I couldn’t see any changes yet. That wasn’t surprising since Kieshala told us that the internal changes came first, at least from what she had been told. She had never really done this personally before or been able to observe any of us while we were changing, so she was going by what she had heard from other members of Clan Moonreef. Our knowledge might be secondhand, but she knew how everything was supposed to work in theory and was confident about her ability to turn people reliably. It had been Maddie’s only chance at the time, so I was willing to place my trust in what she had told us.
Since Nat was still alert and Kieshala was sitting on her coiled tail at the end of the bed, I guessed that they hadn’t done anything to start the process yet. Mom probably wanted to make sure that Nat was all hooked up first, in case there were any unexpected complications or something. “Hey, Nat, Kara told me you’re going to take the plunge.”
“Yeah, Maddie and I wanted to do this together, so I might as well since she’s…” she trailed off and a worried expression washed over her as she looked toward where my sister was lying on the other side of the bed.
Shit, she looked as worried about Mads as I was. It was time to lighten the mood before Kieshala nicked her and gave her some blood. “Don’t worry about Mads, she’ll be betta soon, Nat. So it’s o-fish-shell then? You’re just diving right in with no second thoughts, huh? That’s cray-zy. Are you sure you’re not going off the deep end, perch-ance?”
Jenny quietly chortled at the fish puns and it took a moment, but Natalie cracked a smile too. Fish puns make everything better. “Those puns are terrible, Naiya,” Nat said while trying not to smile.
“You’re just jelly of my wit,” I responded, sticking out my tongue playfully. “I guess I’m fin-ished for now though. I wouldn’t want to cause a roe between us; you might end up wanting to sea my head on a pike. Those should tide you over for a while.”
This time I got her to smile outright while I saw the start of one on Mom as well. Jenny was giggling madly, but the puns got her every time. Too bad that Kieshala couldn’t appreciate puns, her command of English just wasn’t good enough yet. “You’re terrible, Naiya. When I wake up, I’m going to have to pun-ish you.”
“You’ll both be swimming around with us soon, until then, we’ll take good care of you,” I promised as I gave her as much of a smile as I could summon at the moment. “I should go eat something and then figure out what my plans for the day are going to be, so I’ll leave you so Kieshala can do her thing.”
I backed out of the room and made my way to the kitchen, where I sated my hunger with a couple of oranges, some raw shrimp and sea bass, a bit of kelp, and a bottle of water. I couldn’t help thinking about Maddie and Nat though, and how we were all going to get out of Cuba with somebody who was eager enough to capture us to monitor the local cameras and send a wetwork team when my sister popped up.
I had a sinking feeling that we might have to hunker down for a while. If worse came to worst we might have to stay in hiding until we could turn Uncle Jack, Aunt Carmen, Mom, and Dad too, but I wasn’t sure if we could stay out of their sights for what might be a month or more. Then there would be the time that they would need to learn to swim and get used to their new bodies before we could risk swimming to the area that we thought might be where Pierce had found Kieshala. Could we even navigate accurately enough in the ocean depths to find the place? At least with the yacht, we had a GPS to show us the way.
Maddie thought that the group that attacked us was military too. What if they had the navy watching the coast? It was unlikely, but I had no idea what we could expect from these people, and it was making me nervous. I was finishing my breakfast and trying to sort through all those worries and doubts when Mom came to join me at the table. “How are they?” I asked.
“Madeline seems stable and Kieshala is taking care of Natalie’s initiation now,” she responded as she sat across from me. “We tried to get Natalie to wait until Maddie was done and we could be sure it was safe, but she was very insistent. Those two are good for each other, they’re nearly as besotted with one another as you and Kara, but I’m worried that it might be clouding Natalie’s thinking.”
“Yeah, that could be part of it,” I conceded with a nod and a sigh. “She’s been fascinated about the Naethari since she met us though and she was eager to become one as soon as she knew that it was possible. Maddie was really the only thing she had holding her back until now, and waiting for the proper medical equipment that you wanted.”
“That’s true. It’s not that I don’t trust Kieshala, but she has no real first-hand experience with this. That’s why I wanted us to be as prepared as we could be before risking it. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s worrying you, dear? Or should I take a guess?”
I hesitated but finally shrugged. “Maddie, Natalie, those mystery people after us now, and what we’re going to do about it. All of it, I guess.”
Mom reached out to take my hand in hers. “Kieshala seems to think that Maddie and Natalie will be fine. As for all of those other things, I know that we’re going to be counting on you to do a lot of the legwork, and that’s not really fair to you. It’s not fair, but it’s necessary and I know that we can count on you. We trained you and Maddie as well as we could to handle anything that might come your way. You may not have the practical experience that the rest of us do, and your time with legs may be limited, but you also have skills and abilities than none of the rest of us could dream of right now.”
“I still feel underequipped for this,” I told her sadly.
“That uncertainty is common before a mission, Naiya. Maddie feels it, I feel it, and so does your father,” Mom offered as she squeezed my hand. “The best that we can do is make sure that we’re well equipped and mentally prepared for how to deal with the worst possible outcomes. You shouldn’t have to worry about attracting the attention of our enemies, so long as you don’t use a form that they’re familiar with, so that is one thing in your favor. When your father, Jack, and Carmen get back from improving our security, we’ll discuss what our first priorities will be, and how to make sure that you’re as prepared as possible.”
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
One of our first and most important priorities was food and supplies while we were laying low. Kieshala, Jenny, and Kara would be trying to help with that by gathering from the ocean when they weren’t taking shifts laying with Maddie and Nat, but we didn’t feel that it would be safe to leave the lagoon, so that would limit what they could gather for us. We were mostly going to have to rely on whatever I could get while shopping.
Since we Naethari tend to eat more than humans do, especially me and Kara recently, it was decided that I would have to go into Havana for shopping trips every few days until we felt it was safe to move. Doing one massive shopping trip would just be too troublesome on my own and might get the wrong kind of attention. I also would try to spread the trips out at different stores, kiosks, and farmer’s markets throughout the city for the sake of caution. There was a problem that we would need to address though.
The first of those problems was that I would need identification of some sort, just in case. We couldn’t be sure if the identities that we had established for me when we had arrived in Havana might be compromised due to my association with Maddie when we were attacked. I was going to have to change my appearance for when I was in public, and that meant changing my ID to match it as well. So I was going to have to go see the guy that Uncle Jack got to create our identities last time to get a new one created.
Uncle Jack figured that the camera that tipped off our pursuers to Maddie’s presence was probably a security camera that Maddie and I missed seeing somewhere near where we had parked to do our shopping, which was why they had ambushed us there. It probably wouldn’t give them enough information to know where we were holed up, or even the general direction. They were obviously eager to catch her and get the information though, or they would have just set a tail on us instead.
That’s the problem with the military, everything is a strike operation, there’s no subtlety. Though I guess they could have figured that Maddie was experienced enough to detect a tail, and they would have been right about that. If we wanted to throw them off and point them in the wrong direction though, we would have to switch up tactics.
This was why I found myself shifted into the very same form I had been wearing when Maddie and I were attacked and driving a grey minivan, as I followed a very specific route that Uncle Jack had specified. They had probably gotten a good look at my face from the soldiers’ body cams during the attack, so I was probably now a person of interest to be added to their facial recognition searches. We needed to use that since they would likely be checking hospitals for Maddie. When they didn’t find her that way, they would likely assume that she was dead, and she would have been if I hadn’t given her my blood to start her transition into a Naethari. Regardless, it wouldn’t take long for them to start looking for me, Natalie, or Maddie’s known associates if they weren’t already, meaning every human in our group.
The route that I was following would take me out of the city in the near opposite direction of where we actually were, and there were a couple of new security and traffic cameras along it that could be easily missed by someone who had been in the city for a while. The idea was to get ‘my’ face seen on one of the traffic cams, and then the route would allow the other cameras to get glimpses of my route out of the city from a distance if the people keeping an eye on the feeds were clever enough.
After finding a quiet area to ditch the van, I hoofed it to a nearby motel on the outskirts of the city to rest in my natural form for a bit, eat something, and prepare for phase two. Our usual shtick so far had been trying to blend in as much as possible so we wouldn’t get too much attention. That was why we had used bland vehicles like black SUVs and the grey minivan, which didn’t stand out.
Now though, the plan was for me to avoid the attention of our pursuers by doing exactly the opposite and standing out as much as possible. With that in mind, when I finally left the motel in a cab after a two-hour rest, I looked like a completely different person. Rather than the amalgamation of various local girls that I had been shifting into previously to blend in, this form was meant to get attention.
I was now a tall, beautiful, and slightly busty Caucasian woman who looked to be in her early twenties. My eyes were blue, but I had kept my natural magenta hair color, as well as its length, to get more attention. My eyebrows were shifted to a dark blonde shade though, to indicate that the hair was a dye job.
To complete the image, I wore a pair of pink and black high-top sneakers, very short and tight denim cutoff shorts, and a bikini top in the same shade of pink as my shoes. The large shoulder bag that I carried would double as a purse and a place to keep my clothes if I should have to go swimming. It had some waterproof compartments inside where I was keeping my gun and all of the cash on me, and once I got my new documentation, that would be going in one of those pouches as well.
I stepped out of the cab and walked up to the entrance of an apartment building that had seen better days. Hitting what was hopefully the correct number on the intercom, I waited through the static-tinged ringing that followed until a man’s distorted voice asked in a Midwest United States accent, “Who is it?”
“It’s Naiya MacArthur, Jack sent me,” I responded, trying not to show my impatience. It was still very hot outside and I had bought six bottles of chilled water at the motel, one of which I was currently draining when the voice spoke, not that it was chilled anymore. As for my name, I used the MacArthur name because that was Mom, Dad, and Maddie’s last name. With how I looked now there was no way that anyone would believe that my last name was Chan, and Soulsinger certainly wouldn’t work either.
“Yeah, I was expecting you, come on up,” the voice replied, abruptly followed by the buzzing of the door. I quickly opened it and then made my way inside and up to the third floor where Pat Norris and his wife, Novia, lived. Pat was an old contact of Uncle Jack who had gotten married and settled down here in Havana a few years ago. He still took the occasional work forging documents though, and the documents that we had gotten from him before had been good.
I approached apartment number 303 and tapped gently at the door. The door opened almost immediately and a stocky man of average height with ruddy brown hair who was dressed in a baggy hoodie and jeans ushered me inside. There was a bulge in the hoodie, and I could smell metal, gun oil, and gunpowder. I ignored it and stepped inside. If I needed to, I could take him down before he could use it, but things would go a lot faster if he felt secure.
As soon as the door was closed behind me, he pulled the gun to point it at my head. “If Jack sent you, what’s the code phrase?”
At least I was expecting this. Uncle Jack had mentioned that Pat could be a bit paranoid and twitchy. I sighed, carefully took a sip of my water, and turned to look straight down the barrel of the gun at him. “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
He visibly relaxed and lowered the gun. “You’re a cold one, ain’t ya? Hardly batted an eye there. Jack said that you’re one of Max’s girls, so I guess that makes sense. Max and Clara always were cool under pressure. Did you bring the cash?”
My response was to produce an envelope from my shoulder bag and hold it out to him. “Ten thousand, as agreed. Sorry about the rush job, did you get the photos and the other files we sent?”
Pat took the envelope and, after giving a satisfied grunt at the contents, he motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen. “Yeah, I got them. I just got done putting the finishing touches on the documents. You’re good to go, ‘Jessica’.”
When we entered the kitchen, I saw a variety of documents spread out across the kitchen table. There was a California driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, social security card, Cuban Visa, and various travel documents, all under the name Jessica Danvers. The passport showed my current face and hair, though the other photo IDs used pictures of this form with blonde hair instead. Everything looked good and ready to go and worked for the fake background that we had given him to work with.
“Thanks,” I said as I gathered up the documents and put them in one of the waterproof pouches in my shoulder bag. “It was good doing business with you.”
I paid the cab driver and once I was out of the cab I headed straight for the interior of the large garage where I had been dropped off. By day, they did mostly legitimate business doing repairs and modding cars, but at night, the place was a chop shop. I hadn’t met these guys personally before, but they were connected to the local crime ring that Dad and Uncle Jack had been doing business with for our various less-than-legal needs since arriving in Havana. We had gotten some of the vehicles that we used through them and hired some of them when we needed extra bodies.
I walked up to the counter and smiled at the guy who was there flipping through a car magazine as I said, “Hi, I’m here to see Sandro, Jack sent me.” He was tall and lanky, but his bare arms showed definite muscle tone. His hair was long and tied back and I couldn’t see much of his face until the guy looked up from his magazine and his jaw immediately dropped.
“Oh… I… hola señorita. Jack send you? I… umm… take you to the office, Sandro is there.” He offered as he quickly scurried from behind the counter to lead me through a door and into an office. “Jefe, some chica here to see you. She says Jack sent her.”
Sitting behind the desk inside the office was a large and muscular Latino man with short-cropped hair and a goatee. He had a long scar on his right cheek that added character to a face that I supposed was otherwise handsome and wore a simple black t-shirt and jeans as he stood up to greet me. “Hola, Jack usually comes himself, with that big guy, Max, or that redhead.”
Usually, uncle Jack handled the business with Sandro and his people, sometimes with Dad, but Mom, Maddie, and Aunt Carmen had all met with either him or his people at least once. This would be my first time meeting him. Technically I wasn’t officially part of the family business, and with it being so hot they had elected to allow me to mostly stay home and in the pool when they didn’t need me for something like the operation to bring down Pierce. I had only really been with Maddie when we were ambushed because she wanted to spend some quality sister time. If I hadn’t agreed…
I tried not to think about that as I replied with a shrug, “Well, they need to lay low for a bit.” They didn’t need to know anything more than that and it was something that they could probably understand. “I’m Naiya, the redhead is my sister and Max is our dad. Anyway, while they’re laying low, I’ll be doing the opposite since I’ve kept out of sight until now. I have some work to do and I’ll need some wheels, something fast and flashy.”
He looked surprised for a moment and then thoughtful before he suddenly grinned and gestured for me to sit as his underling left the room to let us talk business. “Oh, I got just the thing, you’ll love it. I was modding it for my girlfriend until I caught her cheating on me, so I’ve been looking for a buyer. So tell me, Naiya, just what kind of work do you do? Can you handle something like what you’re asking for?”
“I work with Jack and my dad, so the jobs vary,” I replied as casually as I could as I took a seat. I might not actually have worked with them before we came to Havana to have the practical experience, but I did have the training. “I can do disguises well if I need to, and I’ve been trained to fight and handle most weapons since I was a kid. Don’t worry about me, I can handle fast cars. My sister and I learned to drive when I was twelve and started driving offensively when I was thirteen. You never know when you’re going to need a wheelman.”
Sandro’s face practically split in half from the grin he was now sporting. “You got that right; a good driver is worth their weight in gold. If you’re looking for work while you’re here I can always use someone with skills.”
I wore a pensive expression for a moment to look like I was considering it before shaking my head. “Thanks for the offer, but hopefully we’ll be moving on once we deal with a problem or two. Until then, it is probably best for me to avoid anything that could attract any police attention. I just want something fast to cover all my bases, just in case I get found out and need a getaway car. The car is clean?”
He looked disappointed but he seemed to understand and nodded. “Keep me in mind if you need to make some quick cash,” he finally offered before nodding. “Yeah, I actually got this one legally and was modding it for my girl to get into racing. It’s a Toyota Supra MK IV kitted out with a roll cage, NOS, high-temperature brake pads, and all-weather racing tires. I replaced the suspension and turbochargers, tuned the exhaust and engine, and installed a short-throw shifter. I’ve put a lot of time and work into it, but I’d be willing to sell it for one hundred K American.”
“Let me have a look, and if I like it then I’ll take it,” I agreed. With the two million we had gotten from Pierce, along with our other funds, we weren’t really hurting for cash right now, so I was willing to look it over. So long as it was the opposite of low-profile and could serve as a getaway car if I needed it to, I would be a happy girl.
Sandro led me out of the office and to one of the garage bays that contained the Toyota Supra that he had mentioned. It was painted bright pink with black racing stripes and decals on the sides. A good look at the underside and under the hood showed that Sandro had done good work on it. I wasn’t a fan of the violet undercarriage lighting, but the vehicle was definitely an attention-getter.
When I finally finished my inspection and turned the key in the ignition, the engine roared to life before settling into a gentle thrumming of the engine that was reminiscent of a kitten purring. I revved the engine a bit to get a sense of it before finally turning off the engine and stepping outside to smile at Sandro. “I’ll take it. I’ll give you one hundred and twenty-five K for it, in cash. One hundred for the vehicle and the rest to keep quiet if anyone asks about us.”
“You got it,” Sandro replied with another face-splitting grin. “You people been good to us since you arrived; you paid to work on our turf, hired our people, and brought us some good business. If anyone asks, we never heard of any of you.”
“Thanks, Sandro,” I offered in genuine gratitude as I fished the small satchel filled with stacks of American hundred-dollar bills from my shoulder bag and counted out his payment. After that, all we needed to do was have him sign the ownership papers over to my current alias and I could be on my way. I was glad to have that over and done with since I was starting to get hungry, and I had some shopping to do.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
After using my link with Kara to tell her about my progress, I went in search of some street vendors so I could buy some food to refuel. Given my large appetite though, I spread those purchases across three separate vendors before I had what I thought would be enough to satisfy me. Then I drove the car to an out-of-the-way spot where I could take a short break from shifting for a bit, eat my lunch, and drink a couple of bottles of water.
It hadn’t quite been three hours since my last break, but if I was going to be doing some major shopping and driving around on my own then I wanted to be somewhat fresh for it in case I had to push my limit of a little over six hours. I hadn’t been out without Natalie, Maddie, Mom, or Aunt Carmen and I didn’t really know the lay of the land very well. In addition, when I had been out I had usually taken pains to appear like one of the locals, and had a little help from the others who weren’t stuck in a swimming pool most of the time. This time I was going to look like a tourist and I could get a lot of unwelcome attention.
After that brief break, and silently thanking the car’s manufacturer for the blessing of air conditioning, I found a gas station to refuel the car as well before moving on toward a large Agro Mercado. It was something like a farmer’s market, and it was close by, so it was a good place to stock up on various fruits and veggies. During my ill-fated shopping trip with Maddie, she had told me that they were our best bet for that part of our shopping since there were no chain supermarkets or anything in Cuba, and the selection in the few that there were could be limited. Even if I could find produce at them, it would be cheaper to get them from an Agro Mercado, and it would be fresher as well.
Shopping there went about as well as could be expected. My new car caught a lot of attention as I arrived, as did my current form when I stepped outside of it. The attention made me uncomfortable, but it was all part of the plan and the others were counting on me. Thankfully, I managed to do my shopping there without any sort of major incident. It was expensive, but I was able to half-fill the car’s small trunk with various fresh fruits and veggies, and they were all good quality.
Next, I headed out to the Miramar suburb near the convention center to go to the Supermercado Palco. It was the closest thing to the types of grocery stores that I was familiar with to be found in Havana. I ignored the produce section since I had filled up on fresh stuff earlier, but made good use of the butcher counter, and was able to get a decent selection of canned goods, imported foods, bottled water, and basics like rice, pasta, etc. They even had some limited seafood that I was able to avail myself of, much to my delight. I wasn’t able to get a lot and the only shrimp that I could find were of the frozen variety, but it would help my fellow Naethari.
Most of the people shopping there were foreigners like me or people who obviously had money to spend. I fit right in, but I had been warned that it would be too expensive for most Cubans to shop there. Okay, maybe saying that I fit in was stretching it a bit with all of the skin that I was showing, not to mention my hair color, but I was easily taken for some wealthy foreign tourist, which was exactly what I was going for.
Once I was done at Supermercado Palco, I placed the groceries in the trunk of my car alongside the produce that I had purchased earlier. Then I was back in my car to head toward one of the larger fisherman collectives, though I parked a good distance away before walking the rest of the way. Despite the tantalizing aroma of fresh seafood coming from that direction though, I wasn’t there to shop. Instead, I had my phone out the whole time, and I was taking pictures like a good tourist.
I hadn’t even gotten to the collective yet when I caught the scent of someone who smelled out of place. The scent of the gun on him didn’t necessarily mean anything, especially in Cuba, but he also smelled fairly strongly of gun oil as well. Most people just don’t maintain their guns that meticulously unless they’ve been trained to and have the possibility of using them fairly often.
As I approached, I was able to sniff out his location and get a look at him. He was Hispanic with very short hair and the t-shirt that he wore showed off his well-muscled arms and chest. He was sitting on a bench, watching the people coming and going from the docks while trying very hard to look like he wasn’t by ‘reading’ a magazine about muscle cars. My sharp vision showed that his eyes weren’t on the magazine though, they were looking over it and darting back and forth as he scanned the faces entering and leaving the fisherman’s collective. A half-finished meal from one of the local vendors sat beside him, a meal that had gone cold quite some time ago.
As much as I wanted to get closer and get some Intel, I resisted the urge. This form was supposed to be flashy and get attention, but walking right up to the people searching for us in it was a bad idea. It would have been cocky and invited trouble. Instead, I restrained myself to just walking around and taking a few photos of the docks and the other scenery, I even managed to get him in the frame for one of them.
I couldn’t be certain that he was there watching for signs of us, but it seemed likely to me. By now, afternoon had passed into evening and the sun getting low in the sky. I still had maybe an hour before sunset, when the crowds would start thinning and the collective closed for the evening, but as much as I wanted to use that time, I didn’t have any disguises prepared at the moment. Therefore, I made a mental note to place some in the car for any future counter-surveillance.
When I returned to the villa from my trip into the city, Dad and Uncle Jack insisted on bringing the groceries inside while I got some rest in the pool. Then Aunt Carmen and Mom put a meal together for everyone. I had been hoping to just snuggle with Kara for a while, but she was currently doing her shift with Maddie and Natalie. Instead, I found myself talking to Jenny and Kieshala about things. I told them about how my trip into the city had gone and then, after assuring me that both Maddie and Nat were doing as well as we could hope, they told me about what they had done while I was gone.
Other than their shifts watching over our two Naethari-to-be, Kieshala had briefly taken both Jenny and Kara out for some one-on-one hunting lessons in the lagoon and even a little into the open sea beyond. Beyond the lagoon, the waters got fairly deep and we were far enough from Havana that it wasn’t a spot that would see a lot of tourists or other water traffic. So they had been able to get a decent amount of fish to tide them over until dinner and brought some back to the villa as well.
Still, they dared not go too far along the coastline for fear of encountering humans. They hadn’t encountered any large boats or submarines to indicate an underwater search for us yet, nor had they sensed anything like it using their sonar, but Kieshala thought that it might be best to take me out to meet one of the local dolphin pods if possible. If I could touch one of them then I would be able to take on a dolphin shape to explore a bit further without risking people talking about seeing a ‘mermaid’.
Dolphins would be a good shape for me to take since a small to medium-sized one would fall well within my mass constraints, and I could probably get away with appearing curious and intelligent while scouting. I would still be able to use sonar for echolocation in that form as well. I liked the idea and we planned on going for a swim in search of some dolphins in the morning when Jenny would be relieving me from my shift watching over Maddie and Nat.
Soon Mom called us for a late dinner; Kara would be waiting to eat until midnight when I was due to relieve her. The rest of us went into the dining room to join Mom, Dad, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen to eat. I shifted to legs for the occasion but Kieshala and Jenny managed to get themselves into the dining room and their seats through some controlled slithering. Our tails were sort of like snake tails with fins after all and they were getting much better at using their tails to maneuver on land, but I lacked the practice at it since I was trying to improve how long I could keep up my shifting by using legged forms as much as possible.
Mom and Aunt Carmen had used the ground beef and some of the veggies that I had brought to make some really great tacos and salsa and there was plenty for even us Naethari to eat our fill. As we ate, I told everyone how the trip to Havana had gone. Overall, it seemed like a success; I had hopefully managed to draw our pursuers’ attention away from us with the minivan misdirection, I had gotten some new identity documents, and I was definitely going to be the opposite of low-profile driving around in a bright pink sports car.
Then came the hard part. “I also went to check out the fisherman collective at the docks,” I admitted.
“We told you to avoid that place,” Dad said with a stern look that made me want to sink into my chair.
“I played tourist,” I told them with a slight wince. “I pretended to be exploring and took photos with my phone. I parked several blocks away and I made sure that nobody was following me when I returned to the car. There was a guy there who was trying really hard not to look like he was watching everyone going in or coming out of the area. He smelled and looked like military, but he barely looked at me since I didn’t go in or come out of the docks, I just took pictures of anything around that looked interesting. I got him in one of the pics I took too.” I took my phone from my shoulder bag, selected the photo in question, and then passed it over to my parents.
“Hmmm…” Dad mumbled thoughtfully, “It’s a bit grainy, but there’s a decent shot of most of his face. Jack, what do you think?” he asked my technophile uncle as he passed the pink phone over to him.
“It’s not the best photo, but I can run it through a facial recognition search and see if anything comes up,” Uncle Jack replied thoughtfully. “He definitely looks military, look at that stiff posture. He is probably not special ops though, most likely just a flunky with some rank. High up enough to know there’s an op that he needs to be quiet about and that he has a job to do, but not important enough not the hows or whys of it. They probably have a few like him all over the city, watching likely spots for any of us to show up.”
“You don’t waste your combat units on observation,” Mom agreed. “And that means that he’s probably ready to call in if any of us are spotted, and possibly tail anyone who fits our descriptions well enough. In a public spot like that, they couldn’t risk attacking directly anyway. I’ll bet that magazine had photos of us and Natalie taped inside, but I doubt that he’d have enough information to know why exactly he’s looking for us, so capture and interrogation would likely be a waste of our time and possibly just lead our enemies right to us. At least we have possible confirmation that our suspicions were correct.”
“At any rate, we now know that Naiya will need to be careful whenever she goes into Havana now. We have enough supplies to last for at least a few days, and the stuff in the freezer and the canned goods could last two weeks if the girls can keep bringing in fresh fish. She should be able to stay here until we run out of fruits and vegetables,” Aunt Carmen pointed out.
“I would like to take Naiya out hunting tomorrow, and perhaps see if we can find a pod of dolphins,” Kieshala suggested.”
Dad looked a little lost as he asked, “Why dolphins?”
“To expand my shapeshifting repertoire,” I explained. “Kieshala said that I can take other shapes besides humans, so long as I’ve sampled their genes through touch and I don’t try to lose or gain too much mass from my normal form. A dolphin form could be useful for scouting underwater without being in my natural form. We want to avoid people seeing us and shouting, ‘Mermaid!’ after all.”
“That sounds good,” Dad replied with a grin. “It will give us some options. You still wanted to get in some shooting and fighting practice too, right?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to fight, I had learned as a kid alongside Maddie, but I was human and male then. Now I was a lot stronger and faster and even in a human form, my center of gravity was different. It hadn’t mattered much to me while I was killing the assholes who came after Maddie since I couldn’t afford to hold back, but I needed to learn all over again how to fight to disable or restrain without killing or seriously damaging my opponents.
I quickly nodded in response to Dad’s question. “Yeah, Dad. I mean, I can kill and maim easily enough, even without a weapon, but if I encounter any goons again then I’d rather not show too much of my hand in a fight unless I absolutely have to. Taking a prisoner, or subduing them long enough to use my Soulsinger abilities on them would be difficult too.”
“Alright, I’ll let Kieshala have you in the morning when Jenny takes over for you, and then we can all put you through some combat practice.” With that, our late dinner and discussion came to an end and, despite it only being a little after eleven o’clock, I took over for Kara so that she could eat.
We managed some all-too-brief kisses and caresses as I took over her position between Nat and Maddie, and then said our goodnights so I could get in a comfortable position that would allow me to maintain physical contact with both my sister and her girlfriend. Once I was in position, she gave me one final kiss goodnight and then left to eat. Then I took an opportunity to look over both of my current bedmates.
There were no visible changes yet, but it was mostly internal changes happening at this point if Kieshala was correct. We wouldn’t start seeing outward changes until roughly halfway through the transformation. We were actually lucky that we had things like IVs for fluids and nutrients for Maddie and Nat since Naethari helping people going through this usually not only had to keep physical contact with the person changing, but also chew their food for them and force them to swallow it so they wouldn’t starve.
Still, the two were in a sort of coma, which Mom had induced using some form of drug that she had gotten along with the morphine to spare those being changed the agony of the transformation, and I couldn’t help worrying about them as I lay between them. I carefully placed one hand underneath both of their backs and, while that wouldn’t make for a very comfortable sleeping position for me, it would ensure that I maintained physical contact while I was unconscious. Despite my long and somewhat exhausting day, it was quite a while before I fell asleep.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
I had a fitful sleep with yet more nightmares about being captured, enslaved, and tortured again, and having Maddie and the rest of my family either killed or captured along with me. After one particularly traumatic dream, I was awake for more than an hour before I managed to get back to sleep. I spent that time thinking about the state of affairs and came to two conclusions.
The first was that I had done or was preparing to do everything I could about our situation and realistically, there was nothing more that I could do than that. Second, if I let myself worry constantly about things that I had no control over or was already preparing for then I wouldn’t be doing myself or my family any good. I would only wind up being a nervous wreck, jumping at shadows, and would probably be of no use to anyone if we actually were attacked. Therefore, I forced myself to meditate and focus on some mantras and mental exercises that Kieshala had been working with me on since Hart had tortured me.
I woke up to Jenny sitting on the edge of the bed and tickling my fins. It took a moment before I was awake enough to remember where I was and why, but once I had done so, I let out a yawn and sleepily greeted my mate’s little sister. “Mornin’ Jenny.”
“Good morning, Naiya. Kara said that you have lots to do today so I came in as soon as I finished breakfast,” the young emerald-hued Naethari replied while looking as tired as I felt.
“Thanks, Jenny, you can probably take a nap as long as you maintain physical contact with them both,” I told her sympathetically. Then we maneuvered around so that Jenny took my spot, careful to have one of us touching each of them the entire time. Once that was done and Jenny was in place, I began shifting my tail into legs again. “Okay, Kiddo, I have work to do. Have a good nap and take care of Nat and my sister.”
“I will, Naiya” Jenny promised. “You and Kieshala be careful out there. Kara would be upset if anything happened to you, and I’d miss you and your fish jokes.”
“We’ll be careful,” I promised her back. “At least someone gets my sense of humor, I have to come back for that, right?” I said the last with a wink and then stood up and made my way out of the room, through the living room, and into the kitchen where the others were all taking their time eating breakfast.
Kara was sitting there with her tail coiled up beneath her as she ate and conversed with my parents, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen. They all looked up as I entered, and I went straight to Kara to wrap her up in my arms as I kissed her lovingly. Once I released her from both my arms and the lip lock, she smiled up at me. “Well, I don’t need to be an empath to see that you’re feeling better today, Babe. I mean, it helps, but it’s good not to see you so worried.”
“Yeah, I was up late worrying, but what’s the point of it? Maddie seems to be stable, Nat is coming along too, and I tried to lay down a false trail yesterday for whoever is after us to follow. Realistically, there is not much else that any of us can do right now, except take precautions and try to get ready to either leave or fight off our new stalkers. At least I’m trying to prepare in case the shit hits the fan, and it’s not like we’re completely defenseless,” I admitted.
“I’m running the photo that you took of the man watching the fisherman’s collective through a facial recognition search. Hopefully, if I get any hits, it should tell me who he is and what military entity he’s working for. I’m going to have trouble accessing any military records to find out who his commanding officer is and any useful information though,” Uncle Jack explained with a tired sigh. He looked like he had gotten as little sleep as I had.
I nodded, giving Kara another kiss before replying. “Okay, I guess there’s nothing else I can do except try and track down some dolphins with Kieshala after breakfast and then try to get some weapons and close-quarters combat training in.”
“Yeah, Kieshala is already waiting for you in the cove; she said that you can both eat on the go. I wish that I could go out with you, but we all agreed that there is less chance of you getting spotted if it’s just the two of you. And someone needs to be here to relieve Jenny if you two are late for some reason,” Kara reported before pulling me down by the shoulders for one last impassioned kiss.
I sighed as I reluctantly pulled away after a good long kiss and our lips parted ways. “Yeah, and if something does happen to us, it’s best if you’re here so I can contact you to let you know. If we need a rescue or something, I’ll be able to pass on what information that I can to you. As long as we’re not in another time zone or something.”
I wasn’t really sure just how long our range was with each other, but it was a lot further than with Jenny and Kieshala. We hadn’t found our maximum range yet, not even when I was in town doing things with Maddie in Havana and Kieshala had taken Kara out to sea for some one-on-one training on how to use her sonar and other senses to her advantage in the open ocean, how to hunt, and how to hide from other predators. Kieshala had taken Jenny and me out for similar one-on-one lessons, but Kara and I had been able to stay in contact during my field trip as well.
My mate gave me a stern look. “Well, you just better make sure that you’re careful and nothing does happen, Naiya, because there aren’t many of us in shape to mount a rescue at the moment.”
“Yes, be careful, Naiya,” Mom agreed with a look on her face just as stern as that on Kara’s. “I’d suggest that you carry a weapon, but we don’t have anything that would be useful in the ocean depths. Besides, I’m not too worried about the two of you being able to defend yourselves against anyone stupid enough to attack you in the water.”
“If someone is that stupid, then you know what to do,” Dad added grimly.
“Yeah, Dad, we’ll handle it if we have to, but the plan is to avoid anything that smells of humans,” I replied with one last longing look at my mate. “I’d better get going though, Kieshala is waiting on me and I’m getting hungry.”
With that, I headed to the back door of the villa, which opened onto the large deck and an expanse of sandy beach with an excellent view of the cove and the scenic, foliage-covered cliffs to either side. I quickly shed the sleep shirt that I had been wearing to maintain my modesty inside the house and left it on the deck before following the trail in the sand from Kieshala’s slither-crawling to the water’s edge, where waves lapped languidly against the shore. A good distance from the shore, Kieshala was waiting for me in the water, with only her head above the surface, her orange and gold locks shining in the morning light and making her easy to see with my Naethari vision.
The sky was blue, and since it was still early morning, it wasn’t unbearably hot yet. In fact, it was a beautiful day for a swim, and the tangy salty scent of the sea called to me. So I allowed myself a smile and firmly told myself to have some fun as I ran into the water, waiting until it was at my hips before allowing my legs to shift back into my tail and submerging to join Kieshala.
Before passing out of the cove and into the open sea, we made good use of our sonar and other senses before Kieshala decided on a course that she felt would be safe. We made constant course corrections to avoid places where we might be likely to encounter people. We did encounter a fishing boat on the surface at one point, but we were very deep and stayed near the ocean floor in case we needed to hide for some reason.
Not long after that, we encountered a large school of snapper and once we had their scent and used our sonar sense to get their general location, Kieshala paused. ~ We will have our morning meal here, Naiya. We could be swimming for a while and will need our strength to keep up our search. ~
~ That sounds good, Kieshala, I’m getting pretty hungry, ~ I agreed.
~ You may go first; I will watch for danger and then catch my meal after you have caught yours, ~ she offered, as she continued to look around and scent the water.
I nodded and emitted another whistle. Once I had a sense of where the school was and which direction they were in, I began working my tail and fins furiously and tucked in my shalkai to propel myself forward like a rocket at the school of fish. I was far faster than my prey, built for speed and power, When I was almost upon them, I opened my jaws as wide as I could and snapped them closed as soon as the fish that I was aiming for was within reach.
My fangs sank deep into the scale and flesh and my meal only put up a brief struggle before it went still in my mouth, the taste of its blood making my stomach growl in protest of its emptiness. Meanwhile, its brethren were fleeing the scene of the crime as quickly as they could. ~ Okay, Kieshala, you can catch yours now, I’ll keep my senses peeled for trouble while you do. Then we can both eat. ~
~ Thank you, Naiya, ~ came her reply. A moment later as I held my meal in my hands and used every sense available to me to scan for approaching danger, I sensed the sunset-hued Naethari, speeding into the school that I had chased off a moment earlier.
Moments later, we found a nice patch of kelp to hide in and eat along with our fish. I had managed to catch a good-sized specimen and, along with the kelp, it was enough to fill me up and stop my stomach’s protests that I was neglecting it. ~We just stopped to eat, and we’ll be starting our search when we’re done, ~ I thought toward Kara as we ate.
I was both happy and relieved when my mate’s mind voice replied, ~ Okay, Babe, enjoy your breakfast. Keep me updated if you can. ~
~ I will, my love, ~ I vowed.
I made short work of my meal and Kieshala seemed to be finished hers around the same time because as I tossed the bones aside, she said, ~ Now that we have eaten, let us return to our purpose for being here. ~
~ Don’t you mean our porpoise for being here? ~ I teased with a grin.
~ No, we are looking for a dolphin pod. I guess that a porpoise could work as well though, ~ she replied with a confused frown, completely missing the pun. I guess that her command of English just wasn’t good enough for the subtleties of word humor yet.
~ Yeah, let’s go with dolphins, or porpoises, whatever we happen to find first, ~ I responded with a bubbling sigh. Jenny would have laughed.
We carried on after that, but our course was somewhat sporadic since we were trying to avoid anything that could indicate humans, and Kieshala wanted to keep us away from any major currents for the moment. I was starting to get hungry again when our cautious search seemed to turn up what we were looking for. Kieshala found a pod of bottlenose dolphins darting around while using sonar, but they were a little too close to a coral reef for my comfort.
Reefs like that are usually a hotspot for dive tours and the like, so I wanted to avoid it if we could. Kieshala chittered out a greeting and a request to meet their pod from what we considered a safe distance from the reef. The sound was high-pitched, not something that a human could hear, but it wasn’t the porpoise language that Kieshala had taught, Kara, Jenny, and me. She said that the dolphin language had some similarities, but it was a different dialect.
Since I only knew how to speak Porpoise, and wasn’t entirely fluent in that yet, that meant that Kieshala would need to do the talking if they accepted her invitation. I never really realized how well that sound travels underwater before, but it wasn’t long before we got a reply. Two adults and a calf swam toward us, seemingly brimming with curiosity about us.
Since dolphins can be dangerous if they think they’re in danger, I made sure to make no sudden moves as they approached and inspected us while chittering away to Kieshala, who was speaking back as best she could. I guess that there were dolphins and porpoises in her home world, but they had been separated from their earth cousins for a very long time and the dialects weren’t exactly the same. It seemed that she could communicate well enough with them to get by though.
It seemed like I had been listening to a conversation that I couldn’t follow and trying very hard not to move suddenly for ages before Kieshala said, ~ The adult female has agreed to allow you to touch her, but they wish to see you change in return. They are very curious about your ability. ~
~ Okay, that sounds fair, ~ I agreed.
Kieshala then made the introductions, and each of the three dolphins had a unique whistle for their name. She also roughly translated our names into similar whistle sounds. Even with my improved memory from being Naethari, it took several minutes before I could distinguish between the five whistles and repeat them. The dolphins didn’t seem to take offense though, in fact, Kieshala said that they found my early attempts very amusing, since the first thing she did was explain that I didn’t know their language yet.
Once I could speak all of our names in Dolphinese reliably, the slightly smaller of the two adults approached close enough that I could reach out and touch her. I had never touched a dolphin before, she was slightly warm, and her skin felt smooth and almost rubbery. I wasn’t really sure how long I needed to keep contact to properly sample the DNA, but it was a moment before Kieshala bade me to remove my hand. ~You should attempt it now, Naiya. ~
I nodded and swallowed the sudden lump in my throat as I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to do it. I knew what being a human felt like since I had spent most of my life as one, and had been able to imagine the sensations of what it should feel like early on. I knew what it felt like to bend my knees or wiggle my toes, but having a tail and flippers was completely different. They were vastly different from Naethari biology as well.
I froze in uncertainty as I tried to think about how being a dolphin should feel and came up empty. They were all watching me, and I felt like some idiot who bragged about having this really great party trick and suddenly had performance anxiety. They were all watching me so intently.
Wait. Watching. Maybe if I tried to focus on my shift as I examine her with a critical eye, then it might work. I took a deep breath, which was pretty stupid of me since my airway was closed off with my gills doing all the oxygenating, and then concentrated. I drew out my magic, moving it to the surface of my skin, scales, and fins. Then I drank in the details of the body of Sahoozuu (that is the closest that I can come to pronouncing the whistle that was her name in anything close to human language) and committed them to my memory.
I focused on that image, held it in my mind, and then I willed it to be so. I could feel the shift starting and I almost lost it from the excited chitters and clicks of the three dolphins as I began to change. This was apparently great fun for them, and it was only once the change was complete that I realized that there was a minor problem with my dolphin impersonation. I didn’t know how to move or swim like one, and I was going to need to go up for air eventually in this form.
~ Kieshala, I need to learn to move and act like one of them if I’m going to be convincing at anything more than maybe being injured. ~ I sent to my companion.
The elder Naethari was quick to explain the situation in slightly stilted Dolphinese. The calf thought that this was a great game and I had to contact Kara to reassure her that we were okay and would probably be back later than expected because I was suddenly getting a dolphin education. It wasn’t easy since Kieshala had to relay everything that they told her, but it was helping me to pick up a bit of the language as well as learn what I needed to.
Swimming turned out to be the easy part. Sure, I couldn’t swim as fast or agilely as they could at first, but the basics were the same as in my Naethari form. We did have to go up often for air though, and Kieshala didn’t want to risk being seen by humans to join us when we did that. The afternoon sun was beating down mercilessly above the water’s surface by the time my trainers thought that I would make a passable dolphin, as long as I didn’t try to talk to other dolphins before getting a better grasp on their language.
I was exhausted by the time I shifted back to my comfortable and normal Naethari form, and we parted ways with my teachers. We had eaten lunch with them earlier, but we had to stop for another meal on the way home because I was starving and tired. It was a good thing that Kieshala remembered where we were going because I certainly didn’t. I was going to have to get her to teach me to navigate in the ocean depths.
We swam as quickly as we dared and were home in time for Kieshala to relieve Kara in watching over Nat and Maddie. I laid down and cuddled for a bit with Kara since I was so tired, intending to get up after a few minutes to go see my parents about the training they had promised but apparently, I was tired enough to pass out. It wasn’t really a big surprise with the active day I had had, and so little sleep the past few nights.
I woke up to Kara kissing me lovingly and calling in my mind, ~Naiya, you should get up and have something to eat, Honey. I let you sleep because you damn well needed it, but it’s almost time for you to take over for Kieshala. ~
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
Despite napping for most of the evening, I was ready to fall right back to sleep by the time I finished dinner and switched places with Kieshala for my turn to keep in physical contact with Maddie and Nat. It wasn’t a great sleep since it was once again plagued by nightmares, but I was starting to get used to those, and combined with my nap earlier, I seemed to get enough sleep to feel fully rested when Jenny woke me to take her shift.
As we ate a good breakfast, Uncle Jack told us what he had discovered about the man I had seen watching the fisherman collective. “Corporal Jaime Martinez, I can’t find anything on him for the past two years, but his most recent transfer was to Arlington, Virginia. That probably means that he’s been attached to secret projects and since Arlington is DARPA territory…”
“He’s probably attached to military research projects,” Dad finished with a frown.
“Just great,” Mom spat. “If military research is involved, they’re not going to stop until they get what they want, and they have deep enough pockets to pursue us for a long time.”
“If they capture any of us, we’ll never see the light of day again, at least not without something to enforce our obedience, like an explosive collar,” I muttered as I looked to Kara and Kieshala. “If they capture any of us who are still human, it’s a short hop to Guantanamo Bay, and they’re very dedicated to getting answers by any means necessary.”
“We’re mercenaries, so they’ll probably start with bribes,” Aunt Carmen commented thoughtfully. “When that doesn’t get them the answers that they want, we’ll be moved to their special suites for a more vigorous interrogation.”
Kara’s and Kieshala’s expressions got darker and darker as the conversation went on. “Well, shit,” my mate grumbled. “What do we do then? We can’t move until Maddie and Nat are done changing and if they know who the rest of you are…”
“We stay here for now, Love,” Uncle Jack offered with a shrug. “The contact that I used to rent this place can’t be traced back to us and if they had any idea where we were then they would have already hit us instead of waiting for Maddie to pop up on the grid.”
Dad nodded in agreement. “We’ve fortified our position and put every security measure that we can think of in place. We’ve got plenty of body armor and small arms, and even some grenades if we need them, but we should try to get our hands on some heavy artillery too, just in case. If they do find out where we are, they will hit us hard and fast, and we should be prepared to eliminate anyone they send and move quickly.”
“The boat is fully fueled and ready to go, but I’d rather not move Maddie and Natalie unless we absolutely have to, at least until their transformations are complete. With that in mind, I agree, it’s better to hunker down and wait for now. We can revisit this once the girls have stabilized as Naethari,” Mom contributed.
“If we want heavy artillery we’ll have to go through the black market, and they’ll be watching the usual black market sources for any non-locals,” Aunt Carmen pointed out. “That means that Naiya will have to go in disguise, or through an intermediary.”
“If I go in disguise, I’ll need to use a different vehicle, something with some major trunk space. That pink sports car is too flashy anyway, and it can be traced to my current identity. I might have to talk to Sandro, maybe he can help us out,” I added thoughtfully.
I twisted deftly to the side, allowing my opponent’s fist the fly harmlessly past me. His forward momentum carried him past me, and I kicked at the back of his knee, sending him to the ground, but his partner took that moment to attack my exposed back with a knife. I could smell and hear her coming and dropped low, twisting my upper body to grab her extended arm, and then I used her momentum to flip her over me and onto the ground. She had barely hit the floor when my hand snaked around her arm to squeeze the pressure point in her wrist that would force her to drop the weapon.
She was still trying to get to her feet as I quickly retrieved the knife and slipped the edge across her throat. Once down, one to go. Her partner had gotten to his feet and had drawn a weapon, a Glock is a dependable weapon, not much chance of a misfire and it could do some serious damage this close. I tossed the knife at his head. Most people would go for the chest, center of mass and all that, but it wouldn’t pierce that protective body armor, even if I did want to kill him. I just wanted a distraction before he could bring his weapon to bear.
His eyes widened at the unexpected tactic, and he twisted away from the projectile, effectively taking me out of the path of the barrel of his gun and giving me a moment to close the distance. Limiting myself to human strength and speed was annoying, but if I didn’t then I would give myself away and lose any edge that I might need later if that body camera happened to be recording. Still, the distraction gave me the precious seconds that a mere human would need to close in, and a well-placed chop to my opponent’s wrist knocked the gun from his now numb fingers.
His free hand moved in to make a grab for me and again, I used his momentum against him as I grabbed his wrist and flipped him to the floor, only slightly harder than I had intended. The breath left his lungs in a shallow wheeze, and I didn’t give him time to recover. I twisted his arm behind him and knelt on his back, just behind the shoulder blades, where he wouldn’t be able to make a grab for me, and where my weight and the grip on his arm would keep him at my mercy. “Talk,” I ordered.
Dad half laughed and half wheezed underneath me. “Good job, Naiya. You managed to take us both down that time and subdued me with strength and speed that would be believable from a human.”
Mom groaned as she sat up from where she had been playing dead. “An athletic and well-trained human, but a believable one,” she agreed. “That should be an adequate amount of strength and speed for you to use in a fight without people getting suspicious. If you have to go beyond that, then things have probably already gone off the rails anyway,” she commented as she walked over to pick up the wooden practice knife from where it had landed.
I got off Dad’s back and he rolled his shoulder with a slight wince as he got to his feet. “You surprised me when you threw the knife. Good thinking. People react instinctively to try to avoid things like that, even someone with training will try to avoid taking a knife to the eye, and it allowed you the time you needed to get close.”
We had been practicing for most of the day, only taking a break to eat and allowing me to rest in my true form for a bit. First, we had worked on my marksmanship, and then on giving me a refresher on close-quarters combat. The plan was to not only optimize my fighting abilities but also allow me to disable and capture someone if I needed to while appearing human. It took me most of the afternoon, but it seemed that I was finally able to do so without using too much speed and strength.
That had actually been the hardest part since I took to fighting and shooting again much more easily than any of us expected. Maybe it’s a shapeshifting thing, but I had much better body awareness and control than I had ever had when I had been a human boy. Or maybe it was just that I felt comfortable in my own skin now, no matter what shape it wore. I will admit that my enhanced Naethari senses probably helped a lot too, but they wouldn’t give me away like my strength and speed would.
“Yeah, I figured that would make anyone flinch,” I answered Dad with a grin.
With that, Mom and Dad decided that we were finished for the day, and we went back inside the house so I could chill in the pool and rehydrate for a bit before dinner. It was still way too damn hot outside and all that physical training in such heat had really worn me out. I snatched up my phone from the kitchen counter and started checking through messages as I made my way toward the pool to relax for a bit with Kara and Jenny.
There was one notification of a text from a local number, one that I recognized as Sandro’s. The text was only one character, an exclamation mark. Wondering what would have him sending me such a message, I tapped on his contact info to place a call. Uncle Jack had made sure that the number was secure when we started doing business with Sandro, so I wasn’t too worried about security, and if he was contacting me, it was probably something important.
“Hola,” the familiar accented voice answered.
“Hi, my shifter is stuck, and I might need to have someone take a look under my hood, do you have any appointments free?” I asked cautiously. Just because the phone was secure, didn’t mean that he was at the moment. With that in mind, we had come up with a key phrase to let him know that it was me, in case I needed to contact him for some reason.
“Hola, mi amor, it’s good to hear your beautiful voice again. You still up for a night on the town?” Sandro replied casually.
“What’s up?” I asked with a frown at his answer. It meant that the phone was still secure, but he couldn’t be sure if listening devices or eavesdroppers might be in play.
He managed to sound upset as he said, “No… I understand. La familia es importante. I’m probably going to be busy tonight anyway. There are some tipos here offering big money for some information. My boys don’t know anything, but it might be worth it to have a look around the barrio for anything suspicious so we can cash in. Maybe I can take you out somewhere special tomorrow night instead.”
The message was clear enough. People had come around asking questions about my family and he was going to make sure that his people knew not to tell them anything and see if he could figure out where they had set up shop. “Thanks for the heads-up, Sandro. Tomorrow at noon, the coffee shop where you and Uncle Jack first met to discuss business.”
“Well, that’s a bit expensive, but you’re worth it, mi amor. I’ll pick you up at six,” Sandro replied before making kissing sounds and hanging up.
I placed my phone back on its charger and walked back into the kitchen where Dad was telling Uncle Jack about how my training went, and Mom and Aunt Carmen were making preparations for the evening meal. Without any preamble, I announced, “Sandro called. People have been asking about you on his turf. They’re offering a reward, but his people won’t rat us out and he’s going to see if he can find out anything useful.”
“Shite,” Uncle Jack muttered. “Well, it was only a matter of time. It was the area that we were most active in, after all.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t head into the city tomorrow, Naiya,” Mom suggested with a worried expression.
“I have to,” I replied with a shake of my head. “We’re running low on food supplies again with us Naethari needing to eat so much, and I set up a meeting with Sandro so I can get more details than the vague bits of information that he was feeding me over the phone. I’ll be extra cautious, I won’t break character in public, and I’ll take precautions in case they’ve put a tail on Sandro. I’ll case things out from a distance, and if I think there’s any danger then I’ll abort the meeting and just go buy supplies.”
None of them liked the idea, but they agreed that it was necessary. We did need the supplies, and more to defend our position with than some small arms and a few grenades. They wanted to be able to arm the Naethari among us as well, and teach them how to use the weapons, in case things got too hot here. If that happened, then the more we could thin the enemy numbers before it came to close combat, the better it would be for all of us.
As the conversation drew to a close and Mom and Aunt Carmen got to making dinner, I returned to the pool to get some rest and spend some time with Jenny and Kara. Kieshala had just taken over for my mate and was watching over Maddie and Nat, so it was nice to get some time snuggling with my mate and talking to her and Jenny for a while. Neither was very happy, and both were worried when I told them about Sandro’s call and my plans for the next day, but I think that they were both mostly frustrated because they couldn’t leave the villa to do anything to help.
They were doing something though, and I made sure to tell them as much. They were taking care of Maddie and Nat and making sure that their transition into Naethari would go smoothly, and we and Kieshala were the only ones who could do that. Kara was also my lifeline, and if things went pear-shaped tomorrow, then I would be counting on her to keep the others up to date and let them know about any changes in my plans.
Most of the dinner conversation that night consisted of making plans and contingency plans for my trip to Havana the next day. We must have gone over and refined the details at least a dozen times. With our enemies sniffing around, I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. I wouldn’t let myself make any. My family’s safety depended on me, and I wasn’t going to let them down.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
I headed into Havana as soon as I had finished breakfast, bringing along my gun and several changes of clothes of various sizes in a duffel bag. The café where I had told Sandro that I would meet him was a good distance away from his territory, in one of the major touristy areas of the city, so I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t attract too much attention there. It also seemed like a safe bet for a meeting spot with the people looking for my family seemingly concentrating on Sandro’s turf at the moment, or in places they might need to go for ‘mermaid’ food and supplies.
It was just before ten o’clock when I rented a room for the day at a nice hotel geared toward tourists, where I could park my very flashy sports car in the parking garage and out of sight. With that done, I went up to my room on the second floor to rest my shifting powers for a bit and then change my look. An hour later, I left the room appearing like a somewhat plain brunette Caucasian woman in her late twenties or early thirties wearing a white blouse, long colorful skirt, and leather sandals, with a large shoulder bag.
I spent the next hour wandering the streets around my destination, keeping an eye out for anyone who seemed out of place while pretending to be interested in the sights. Sandro surprised me by arriving on foot a good twenty minutes before we were due to meet, dressed casually in shorts and a sleeveless shirt that showed off his muscular build. He was looking over his shoulder occasionally to make certain that he hadn’t been tailed and I appreciated his caution. I watched him, and then the slightly crowded streets, but nobody seemed to be taking an undue amount of interest in him or our meeting spot.
Only then did I slip quietly back to the hotel for a quick change of form and clothes, back into my flashy Jessica Danvers persona. I was getting good at these quick changes and managed to return to the meeting spot only five minutes late for our meeting. I probably could have been right on time, but I took several moments pretending to look in the window of a clothing store to be sure that nobody suspicious had shown up while I was gone and might be doing the same thing I was while casing the café. Sure, I was being a bit paranoid, but paranoia had kept us safe until our slip-up on the night that Maddie and I were attacked.
I strode into the café, thankful that it was somewhat cooler than outside, and after scanning the area for any cameras or possibly hidden listening devices, I ordered a bottle of water and headed toward the table where Sandro was nursing a cup of coffee. I casually took a seat across from him and smiled as I quietly said, “It doesn’t look like you were followed.”
“Sí,” he agreed with a subtle nod. “They had someone on my tail, but I was able to lose him in the crowds at the tourist market by taking a few detours. This might not be my turf, but I still know this city better than some foreigner.”
I found myself smiling at his forethought. Sandro was good at this. “Nice. Thanks for the warning last night, Sandro. What can you tell me about these people asking around about us?”
“I’m guessing they’re military of some sort, not mercs like you. They’re obviously trained but act like they’re too good to work with the likes of us. They just want to pay for some information and be on their way so they can track your people down. Cash if we give you up, and subtle threats about what might happen if we don’t. It’s insulting,” Sandro complained with a grimace.
“What do you have your people telling them?” I asked in concern for both our safety and that of Sandro and his people.
Sandro’s grimace turned into a grin as he replied, “The truth, of course. It’s more likely to get them out of our hair sooner, less likely to blow up in all of our faces, and we might get a payoff out of it. Your family came to us, paid to work on our turf, and we helped you pull a few jobs like killing that rich asshole’s bodyguards, but we haven’t heard from any of our regular contacts with you for almost two weeks since helping you make some contacts with the local black market. My people don’t know more than that and what most of your people look like.”
I nodded thoughtfully. That could probably work since none of them knew about us Naethari. Sandro was also the only one who had a direct method of contacting my family, or vice versa. “And what about you, Sandro?”
His grin only got bigger. “Oh, I showed them the number that I had for Jack in my contacts list after talking to you last night. For some reason though, it seems to be for a deli, but then, Jack always struck me as the cautious type and he was the one who always made contact.” That slick bastard had changed the number and I couldn’t help but laugh as he continued to explain. “I also gave them the numbers of a few minor black-market dealers that I didn’t give to Jack since I didn’t figure they would be worth his time. It will make it look like I was giving them good info, but nothing that might lead to your family.”
“What about me, Sandro? Your people have seen me around the garage, and I do attract attention,” I pointed out, beginning to wonder if such a high-profile cover had been a good idea after all.
Sandro shrugged, seemingly not worried. “Naiya, the only one who knows that you came to me from Jack is Luis, and he won’t give you up. As far as the rest of my boys know, you’re just some rich tourist named Jessica who I sold a car to, and who I’m trying to romance.”
“I’m afraid that I’m already taken,” I offered with a smile and a shrug of my own, suspecting that he wasn’t completely serious about the last part.
“All the good ones are,” he replied with a nod before taking my hand and kissing it. “It does give me a good excuse to call or meet with you though.”
I nodded in agreement. It would give us an excuse to meet, and every sense I had available seemed to be telling me that he was being honest with me since showing up. “It does, especially with these assholes after my family and watching for any sign of us showing up. This complicates things and we’re going to need to take some precautions. I might need a favor, Sandro.”
To my surprise, there was no hesitance as he sipped at his coffee and asked, “What kind of favor?”
“With the current situation, we’re going to need weapons, enough to hold off an assault if necessary. None of that Cold War era Russian shit that is all over the local black market, but good, modern, and dependable weapons. We’ll need assault rifles, a few handguns, lots of ammo, and some heavy artillery too if it can be managed, and that’s going to be tough with those assholes watching you and waiting for my family to show up in public somewhere,” I told him seriously, keeping my voice low even though the café was mostly empty.
Sandro’s expression turned pensive, and it was a couple of minutes before he sighed and spoke again. “That’s not my usual type of business, but I do know of one dealer who has, or can probably get what you want. You might want to be prepared though, and definitely be careful. I can help you out with precautions and making contact, but I’m going to need a favor in return.”
I parked the car that I had borrowed from Sandro in the parking lot and looked at the building with trepidation. It was almost midnight, and I was a little nervous about going in there alone. I had spent most of the afternoon shopping and then running the supplies back to the villa and I had barely had time to eat dinner with Kara and the others before heading back into Havana. Then I was in a rush to buy some new clothes for my disguise and pick up the borrowed car from the pre-arranged location so I could return to the hotel to get some rest in my true form before shifting into the form that I had chosen for tonight’s meeting with the arms merchant Sandro had recommended.
The man in question owned the business that I was currently parked in front of and Sandro had given me directions and advice on dealing with the man. Not that I needed much in the way of directions since the bright neon sign of the nightclub had been hard to miss. Sandro told me that the place catered to the tourist crowd, not all that surprising since it wasn’t all that far from the hotel where I had left my high-profile pink sports car.
I could have come as my flashy tourist alter ego and fit right in, but Sandro had suggested that I try to disguise myself, and I couldn’t help but agree with him. If things went bad here, then I didn’t want my only viable identity to be connected to it. Pissing off an arms merchant was something that I was hoping to avoid tonight though.
The form that I had shifted into was meant to be eye-catching, but very different from my Jessica Danvers form. Rather than a beautiful and slightly edgy rich girl, I was going for more of a femme fatale vibe tonight. To look at me, most would think that I was Caucasian and in my mid-twenties at first glance, but a closer look would make people guess half-Asian, it was sort of like a female version of my original human self. I was slightly taller than average, but not near as tall as in my Jessica form, and I had this fit and somewhat dangerous look with my slinky black dress, three-inch heels, and short and spiky black hair.
I walked up to the doors of the club with practiced predatory grace, constantly taking in my surroundings and the people around me using both sight and smell. The line was fairly long but I walked right up to the bouncer and said, “I have an appointment to see Señor Aguila, my name is Xenya Li.”
The bouncer absently gestured for me to go inside as he said, “Talk to the bartender.”
Wasting no time, I stepped into the club, the sudden loud volume and intense bass of the music making me glad that I had dulled my hearing somewhat in this form as I navigated the tables and made my way around the dance floor toward the bar. The club was pulsing, not just with the music but the lights on the dance floor as well, and the bar had a sort of tropical island motif that just screamed tourist trap. The bar was long, and the bartenders were a pair of Latina women who didn’t look much older than my current form, pretty and dressed in short shorts and a crop top that bore the club’s logo on what little material that managed to cover their ample chests.
There was a lineup, so it was several minutes before I managed to step up to the bar and speak to one of the bartenders. The woman behind the bar had barely looked me over before asking in heavily accented English, “What can I get for you?”
“Rum and Coke,” I replied carefully, “and a meeting with Señor Aguila. I’m Xenya Li, he should be expecting me.”
The bartender gave me a price and as she was mixing my drink, I pulled a bill from my shoulder bag and slid it across the bar. It was more than enough for the drink and tip and after I waved off the offered change, she spoke into a phone as I sipped at my drink. The drink was nice and sweet, but with my Naethari regeneration, there was very little chance of me getting so much as a buzz, even if I spent the whole night trying. It was a good thing that I wasn’t here to get drunk.
I had half-finished my drink when the bartender put the phone back in its cradle and gestured to a very large and muscular man approaching the bar. He was apparently the strong and silent type, so the bartender spoke for him. “Enrique will take you to see Señor Aguila, but he’s going to have to search you first.”
I shrugged and nodded, having fully expected this possibility. Sandro had told me that the man was very cautious about who he dealt with and had an eye for the ladies. My purse was too small to carry a weapon and I didn’t have any on me at the moment either since I wanted him to deal with me. Truthfully, if I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t have needed a weapon to kill him anyway. A partial shift to reveal the toxic barbed spines of my vuhac could kill him before he realized what was happening.
I quickly downed the last half of my drink and then followed Enrique, who led me to and then through a door that was off-limits to the general public. There was a hallway with doors to either side that led to a staffroom and a storage room, and at the end of the hall was an office. Enrique stopped before we could reach the latter to look through my mostly empty purse and give me a very thorough pat down.
Having a man’s hands all over me like that made me cringe, more so because he seemed to be enjoying it, but it was a necessary evil to get what I was here for, so I quietly endured it until he decided that I wasn’t carrying an uzi in my panties or something. With it over, I glared at the large man as I controlled the revulsion that I was feeling and got into character. “I hope you enjoyed that because if your hands touch me like that again, I’ll break them,” I told him in a tone cold enough to freeze hell over.
It would seem that Enrique understood enough English for his skin to pale by at least two shades at my threat. Either that or my tone and expression conveyed my message with perfect clarity. He didn’t reply, but instead opened the door to the office and motioned for me to enter. It was time to meet the arms dealer in his lair; I just hoped that this visit would be worth it and that I could handle it. I wished that Maddie was with me as I stepped through that door, she would have been so much better at this kind of thing than me.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
The office was lavishly decorated with a plush red carpet, a cherry wood desk, and expensive-looking knickknacks strewn about. There were no photos or anything that I thought could be personal, just a large display of wealth. It showed the priorities of the man who sat behind the expensive desk watching me, even as I tried to get a read on him from what I was seeing.
He was a man who valued wealth, that much was obvious from the office, the expensive desk, and the lavish leather chair that he sat in. He wore a tailored white suit, was clean-shaven, and there was quite a bit of gray in his receding hair that he didn’t seem vain enough to try to cover up. He liked making money and showing it off, but he likely didn’t have a large ego. I could work with this, but I would need to be careful. If he thought that there was money to be made by stabbing me in the back, he would likely do so with no hesitation.
For a long moment, we both engaged in a silent staring contest as we tried to get a read on each other. Aguila was the first to break, plastering an almost-convincing smile on his face as he gestured for me to take a seat in one of the pair of plush hunter-green armchairs across the desk from him. His English was good when he finally spoke and I could barely place an accent; I would say that he was probably bilingual. “Ah, Miss Li, it is a pleasure to meet you. Maria said that you were lovely, but I see now that the word hardly does you justice. I was most curious when I received your request for a meeting. May I ask how you heard about my services?”
I sat down in the offered chair as I formulated a response and tried to stick to the role that I was playing. I ignored his compliments and got right on to business. “Friends in low places, Señor Aguila. I found the local black market to be disappointing, so I asked around. Your name came up as someone who might have what I’m looking for.”
“Ah yes, and what is it that you are looking for exactly? I offer a wide variety of services, you see,” he inquired as he leaned back in his seat with a pensive expression.
For an arms merchant, he seemed very reluctant to peddle his wares. I would have thought that he was planted by the police or some government agency if it wasn’t for the fact that neither his body language nor his scent indicated deception. I could hear that his heart was racing a little though, despite his outward calmness, and it took a moment for me to realize why. He wasn’t some kind of plant, he was worried that I might be.
To be fair, I had contacted him abruptly using code phrases that I had gotten from Sandro, and since we had never done business before that could be seen as suspect. I needed to figure out how to allay his suspicions without doing something to further them. I considered being direct, but if I just came right out and said that I wanted to buy weapons, then he would probably think that I was trying to get him to admit to being an illegal arms merchant. Fuck it, time to go all in.
I let out an exasperated sigh and told him in a no-nonsense tone, “Look, I’m not here to bust you or anything, I’m here for a simple business transaction. I give you money, and you provide me with the weapons on my list or reasonable alternatives. If I was wearing a wire, a weapon, or a badge, that goon of yours would have found them when he felt me up. Believe me, he was thorough. I need a shower after that. This time, I allowed it as the price of doing business with you. If it happens again, I kill him, and if you think that I need weapons for that then you would be sorely mistaken.”
To my surprise, my candidness and the threats of physical violence and death to Enrique caused him to relax and bark out a laugh. Just like that, the tension in the room seemed to evaporate. “I will be sure to remember that for our next meeting, Miss Li. You mentioned a list?”
“See that you do,” I replied with a cool and casual calmness as I extracted a folded slip of paper from my purse and slid it across the desk toward the arms merchant. That’s my wish list. If you can get me everything on there, or some good quality alternatives, I would be grateful.”
“How grateful?” he asked with a slight smile as he looked me over again.
“Not that grateful,” I immediately countered. “Even if I were interested in men, I doubt that my fiancée would approve.”
“You can’t blame a man for trying,” he replied, still smiling as he shrugged it off. Then he carefully unfolded the paper and looked over the list thoughtfully for a moment. “I can get you most of this easily enough, but I might have to make some substitutions for the heavy artillery. I could have it ready to go in two days, but that’s a lot of weapons for one person. What do you plan on doing with all of that?”
“Nothing that will hurt your bottom line, I assure you. Most of it is for home defense. My employers have enemies, and we would rather be prepared in case they decide to come calling while we’re here. I hope that we will finish our business and be out of Cuba before that happens, but an unprepared mercenary is a dead mercenary, and I rather like living,” I explained calmly.
Thankfully, Aguila was professional enough not to ask about my ‘employers’ or their business in Cuba. Instead, he nodded as he agreed, “I am in favor of preparation, especially when it brings me business like yours, Miss Li. Now, let us discuss price and payment…”
We haggled for over fifteen minutes. My parents had told me what would be fair prices for what we needed, and I was able to save a little by buying many of them by the case instead of individually. I would rather have too many weapons than not enough, especially since we were buying more than one of each anyway. Was I going to turn down case of four rocket-propelled grenade launchers with grenades because we only wanted two? No, I was not. Especially not when we could afford it at the moment.
Once we were finished haggling and deciding on numbers and overall price, Señor Aguila snatched up a sticky note from inside a drawer in his desk and scribbled down something. “Be there at the appointed time, and bring the payment in American dollars,” he told me as he slipped the sticky note across the desk toward me.
“I’ll be there,” I replied as I glanced at the note. It was little more than an address, a date, and a time. Ten minutes before midnight, less than forty-eight hours from now. I allowed myself to relax just a little once I had left the office and the club and returned to my borrowed car. On the one hand, I was relieved that the meeting had gone somewhat well, and we would be getting the weapons relatively soon. On the other hand, a lot could happen in two days, and I was going to be on edge until I knew that those weapons were functional and back at the villa to keep my family safe.
Only once I was safely back in the borrowed car and had made certain that nobody was watching me did I duck out of sight and change my features. I owed Sandro a favor, and he had wasted no time in collecting. Using the cheap burner phone in my purse, I called Sandro’s number. My encrypted phone, along with my car keys and other important items connected to my current identity had been sealed in the safe inside my hotel room since I didn’t want anything on me that could be traced to me or my family.
As soon as I heard his voice on the other end, I said, “The meeting is over, and I got what I needed. Now, what is the favor that you wanted in return? Is it something that needs to be done tonight? I’m getting kind of tired.”
“No, mi belleza,” he replied, careful not to use my name. “You see, there’s a party tomorrow night on a yacht, and I need a date, someone who could fit in with a bunch of wealthy Americans, and who can take care of herself if trouble comes up.”
Great. I knew that I shouldn’t have given him an open-ended favor like that, but he had come through for us in a pinch and he hadn’t thrown us under the bus. At least he wasn’t asking me to be a wheelman on a big job or something. “Tomorrow night? I do owe you a favor, I guess, but a party on some yacht? That doesn’t seem like it would be your kind of thing.”
“That’s why I need someone who looks like they belong there,” he replied. “I… appropriated a very special car for the host of the party and we’ve been working on it for a while to get it ready. He sent me a couple of invites to this party on his yacht so we can exchange the keys and payment there. I don’t trust him completely so I could use some insurance as well.”
“So, I’ll be acting as your date and your bodyguard then?” I clarified. There were worse favors that he could have asked. When he answered in the affirmative, I thought for a moment before telling him, “I would rather not have my current alias or my face connected to this, so I’ll be using a fake name and disguising my features a bit.”
“Sí, that’s probably a good idea. The invites don’t have names attached anyway, and it’s not like they’ll be checking IDs or anything. The party is mostly for his rich friends and other guests that he has personally invited.”
“Okay, send the details to my usual number and I’ll call you tomorrow to work out the specifics. I’m going to drop off this car where I found it and pick up my things so I can head home for the night,” I told him. I wasn’t lying about being tired. It had been a very long day and I was feeling it.
~ No, ~ Kara’s voice insisted in my mind. ~ I can feel how tired you are in your mind, Naiya. And you’ve been pushing your shifting ability hard lately. I’m your mate and an empath, so you’re not fooling me. You are not driving that long to get back here when you have a perfectly good hotel room to sleep in. You need rest, and the three of us can take care of Maddie and Nat. ~
~ But I want to stretch my fins and… ~ I began to object.
Her mental tone turned pleading as she sent all the love that she felt for me along our mental link. ~ Naiya, honey, please. I know that you want to be here with the others, and me, but you are being a big help by doing the things that nobody else can do right now. As long as you stay hydrated, sleeping in an air-conditioned room for one night in your base form shouldn’t do you any harm, and you can take a nice soak in the bath in the morning before driving back here. ~
I relented. There wasn’t much else I could do since I knew that as much as she too wanted me there to hold in her arms, she was suggesting this for my own good. ~ I… fine, I’ll get some rest here and come back in the morning. Not that I’ll likely have much time to spend with you tomorrow. I’m going to have to prepare for that party tomorrow night and figure out what to wear, and I can guarantee that Mom is going to want to spend most of the day teaching me all of the manners and stuff that I’ll need to know to blend in with those snobs on the boat. ~
~ Good. I’ll let the others know what is going on. Get some sleep, my love. I will see you in the morning, ~ my mate replied as she wrapped me in a mental embrace. I held on to that embrace for as long as I could before she finally released me with a stern, ~ Sleep now, my love. ~
Sleeping on a bed in my Naethari form was strange. I was used to sleeping in the water, and the lack of that familiar comfort made it difficult to fall into a restful sleep. I also had to get up a few times to rehydrate myself. I thought that I might have gotten the necessary six hours by the time I woke up at ten o’clock to check out. I wouldn’t say that I felt rested, but at least I didn’t feel exhausted and half asleep.
I was a bad girl and had fast food for breakfast after checking out, mostly because it was fast, cheap, and would allow me to order enough to fuel my Naethari appetite. I ate in the car and called Sandro, and then made one more stop before leaving Havana to return to the villa. That stop was a fancy dress shop where I went in with the altered appearance that I planned on using for the party that night.
I didn’t bother looking through the racks. I just approached the sales clerk and told her that I was going to a high society party that evening on an acquaintance’s yacht and that I wanted to look my best. I let her take the lead and soon I was loaded up with an evening gown and accessories that would flatter my figure and go well with my coloring for the evening.
I could have probably done that before the party, but I didn’t want to leave it to the last minute, and I figured that Mom was going to want to make sure that I was properly prepared for the evening before I left the villa to meet Sandro. I didn’t want to make another trip into the city, unless it was unavoidable, until then. Hell, I wouldn’t even be going to the party if I hadn’t promised Sandro a favor for putting me in contact with a reliable arms merchant. I wanted to be with the people that I cared about, not at some party for rich people.
It was lunchtime when I returned to the villa and Kieshala was currently watching over my sister and Natalie. After talking things over with Mom and Dad, they sent me to the poolroom with my lunch in hand. Kara and Jenny were both eating at the poolside and I joined them to eat before getting some time in the pool relaxing in my mate’s embrace while catching up with her and her sister.
I told them about how making contact with Señor Aguila had gone, and they told me about how Uncle Jack and Aunt Carmen were starting to teach both of them to use firearms whenever they weren’t watching over Maddie and Nat. We didn’t have many weapons or ammo to go around at the moment that weren’t specialized, like Maddie’s sniper rifle, but for now, they were being taught the basics using their adoptive parents’ personal handguns.
Mom and Dad let me have almost two hours of relaxation with them in the pool to recharge before Mom entered the poolroom. “Naiya, we need to go over some things if you’re going to be ready for tonight. We don’t have much time for me to teach you what you need to know before we have to get you ready.”
She was right. It was almost three o’clock and Sandro’s text said that the party would be starting at nine. That would only give me six hours to get ready for my role, get prettied up, and get to the party. That wasn’t even taking into account the travel time to get back into the city and navigate the traffic to get there on time. It was going to be a very long afternoon.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
I stepped out of the car feeling wholly unprepared for the night ahead of me. The car was the same one that I had borrowed for the previous night’s trip to Aguila’s nightclub, with my car once again in the parking garage of the hotel where I had again rented a room for the night. I didn’t know how long we were going to be at this party, and I didn’t want my current identity tied to this, just in case things went off the rails somehow. With that in mind, my car was left at the hotel and my ID, keys, and several other items were in the safe inside my room.
Determining a look for this evening had been difficult. I needed to look enough like the person that Sandro knew that he would recognize me, but different enough that he would believe me to be disguised, and so things like facial recognition wouldn’t be able to match the girl I was tonight to Jessica Danvers. It was a fine line, but I had somehow managed to make it work.
I started by altering my facial features and coloring. My cheekbones were slightly more pronounced, my lips plumper, my nose slightly larger with a more Roman shape, and my face slightly more oval than its regular heart shape while my eyes had gone from Jessica’s blue to green and my hair and eyebrows were now a deep chestnut brown. Overall, it made me look more artificially gorgeous and somewhat refined, which my parents thought would suit the occasion.
At least I had a general idea of what I wanted to do when I bought the dress, so everything fit right. I was roughly two inches shorter in this form, though the three-inch heels would make that hard for Sandro to notice, and my body shape hadn’t changed much except for increasing my cup size by one. I could always claim that I was wearing inserts if Sandro dared to ask, but I didn’t think that he would.
I wore a dazzling emerald green bodycon dress that went well with my eyes, contrasted nicely with my tanned skin and deep brown hair, and showed a lot of cleavage. The sleeveless garment hugged every curve and had a knee-length hem with a slit along the left side that went almost up to my hip. It was also strapless, and I was half-afraid that I was going to fall out of it and the equally strapless bra beneath it. My accessories were black thigh-high stockings, a matching pair of three-inch heels, a similarly colored clutch purse with gold accents, diamond earrings, and a gold and diamond teardrop pendant.
The accessory that people wouldn’t see unless necessary was hidden in a garter holster beneath my dress and it had taken some practice to be able to walk comfortably with it strapped to my inner thigh. My parents had spent almost three hours teaching me how to walk and stand properly while drilling me about how to blend in with the idle rich that afternoon. Even when they decided to let me rest my shifting ability in preparation for a long night, they started drilling me on table manners, conversation topics, and a bunch of other minute details that I was afraid I would forget despite my improved Naethari memory. I had a bad feeling about this party.
I tore my mind away from such thoughts and tried to focus on the moment. Several luxury cars were already parked nearby, and I had a good view of the yacht and the well-dressed guests that were already beginning to board. Another set of approaching headlights caught my attention, and I watched as the cherry red and white classic car found a parking spot and Sandro stepped out.
From what Sandro had told me earlier, the car was a 1957 Corvette and it had been painstakingly restored. The body had been mostly in good condition, but several of the panels and one of the doors had been replaced due to rust before it had been repainted. The interior had also been completely redone and re-upholstered and while it had been rebuilt to maintain the classic look of the Corvette, under the hood it was a completely different, and much more modern, beast.
It was a car for a pseudo-collector; someone who wanted to show off having a classic car but didn’t care about full restoration and wanted something he could drive and raise some eyebrows with. I moved toward my ‘date’ and put a smile on my face. “The car looks nice, but then, I know that you do good work. You don’t clean up too bad yourself either,” I admitted. Sandro did look good wearing a suit rather than his usual t-shirt and jeans, and the scar on his cheek added a bit of character.
His eyes widened as he looked me over. “Naiya? Madre de Dios, you weren’t kidding about being good with disguises. I barely recognize you.”
“It comes in handy in my family’s line of work,” I replied quietly with a shrug of my shoulders before making a hushing motion. “I couldn’t find any cameras pointed this way, so we should be safe here, but tonight I’m not Naiya or Jessica. I’m Danica Holmes, the aspiring socialite daughter of an American businessman and your date for the evening. If I’m going to be your bodyguard, you’re going to have to remember that and play along with whatever I say. I would prefer it if the other guests and our host underestimate me.”
Sandro nodded and took a deep breath. “Sí, you’re right. Let’s do this… Danica.”
It was strange seeing Sandro looking nervous or uncertain. During the short time that I had known him, every time that I had seen him until now, he seemed to be extraordinarily confident and at ease. Now he looked like he was feeling very outside his element, and it was somewhat endearing. I leaned in close and entwined our arms as I got into character by placing a bubbly and somewhat vapid expression on my face.
By the time we reached the boarding ramp, and the man looking over the invitations, I was cheerfully chattering in a chirpy voice. “C’mon, Sandro, don’t look so nervous, this is going to be fun. I’m sure that all of the best people will be here, and we can make all sorts of connections. Daddy says that connections are, like, super important.”
Sandro had briefly raised an eyebrow but quickly seemed to catch on to my intention as he presented our invitations. Thankfully, while Sandro did receive a brief pat-down to check for weapons, they didn’t do the same with me. It could have been my vacant stare, the fact that my dress showed off more than it didn’t, but he didn’t seem to see me as a threat. He did check my tiny clutch purse, but that barely held my makeup, burner phone, and a few hastily made fake gold credit cards that Uncle Jack had produced when going over Danica’s background with me. Now I just needed to keep up the bimbo heiress act for the rest of the party and hope that our host wasn’t going to double-cross my ‘date’.
We got on board and began to mingle with the other guests on the deck and nurse glasses of champagne. Or rather, Sandro nursed one while I drank several. With my Naethari metabolism and resistance to toxins, I wouldn’t need to worry about getting drunk, but the other guests wouldn’t know that. Sandro and I were both a little nervous from the looks the other guests were giving us, but I had been expecting that.
Even in a nice suit, the muscular and scarred Sandro looked out of place here. Combined with the fact that he was with quite possibly the hottest woman on the boat, one who was apparently well on her way to getting very drunk, this wasn’t much of a surprise. I had been expecting the attention, and it was all part of my plan to appear relatively harmless.
What I hadn’t expected were the plethora of security cameras on the boat, particularly those positioned toward the deck, where the party was now in full swing as the boat took us beyond the harbor and away from the noise of the city. There were too many cameras; many of them well hidden enough that even my eyes had trouble spotting some of them.
Every instinct told me that something was wrong. Unfortunately, we couldn’t exactly leave now that the yacht was leaving the shoreline behind us. For now, the best thing that I could probably do was to keep up the act and hope that this wasn’t some sort of trap.
At least the buffet that had been set up boasted some good food, including shrimp, which made me very happy. Still, I was very careful to be dainty and follow the advice that my parents had given me on proper etiquette to keep up the act as we both filled plates and ate. I couldn’t eat enough to completely fill my stomach with the humans watching me, but the food was good, and it was nice to indulge a little and wash it down with more champagne.
Any mercenary worth their salt would never drink as I was while working, you have to be completely alert and alcohol compromises that and your judgment. Naethari can’t get drunk though, and I didn’t want anyone to suspect my true role at Sandro’s side. For that, I needed to look and act like I belonged here. Mom told me that the most important thing to remember at parties like this is that the guests are typically composed of three types of people; the filthy rich who were trying to become richer, the aspiring rich looking for investors, and the socialites.
I was playing the latter. The socialites can vary widely in how much wealth they have, their motivations their personalities, and their general behavior. They’re wild cards. My role for tonight was the party girl socialite from a moderately wealthy family who is eager to get their name in the right social circles and possibly move up the food chain, but who has little self-control and is a bit vapid and self-absorbed.
Most of the guests were what I had been expecting for a party like this, though there were a few servers who were dressed the part but smelled and carried themselves like military. They had me on edge, but I did my best to stay in character. There was also a guest that I hadn’t been able to talk with directly. I could feel him watching Sandro and me as the evening pushed onward, and despite the suit that he wore, the man didn’t belong on this boat any more than Sandro or I did.
He was large and intimidating, was probably in his fifties or sixties, and his rigid posture and general fitness made me think that he was a military man. He wasn’t even trying to blend in or mingle, regarding the other guests with a disdainful look on his grizzled face as he puffed on his cigar. Whenever I looked his way, a chill ran down my spine and the words of Admiral Ackbar came to mind. “It’s a trap!”
A trap for me or Sandro though? If I were on my own, I would just cut my losses and jump overboard at the first opportunity, but I had promised to be Sandro’s bodyguard and I wasn’t about to go back on my word. No, the best thing that I could do was to keep up the act and pretend to be oblivious until I could figure out how deep the shit we were standing in really was and I could figure out a way to dig us out, or until the man decided to make his move.
Soon, Sandro and I found ourselves in a conversation with several guests of the male persuasion and I was putting on the giddy drunk act while helping to sell that image by shifting more blood to my cheeks and slurring my speech. I also made a show of taking a selfie with Sandro and our new ‘friends’ and posting it on the social media accounts that Uncle Jack had set up for ‘Danica’.
Andrew Frost was the son of our host, a Texas oil tycoon, and he was attending Stanford and learning about the family business. His two friends, Sam Dreyfus and Cody Walsh, were both from old world money and attending Stanford law school and medical school respectively. The three had just finished their school year and were in Cuba on vacation.
Mostly we had been talking about our lives back in the States, and Andrew had just finished regaling us with boring stories about life in Texas and inflating his importance in his father’s oil empire while I pretended to be fascinated. “Wow! That’s, like, shoo intereshting. I wanna get into business too, but Daddy says I don’ have the ashets or the acru… acu-man? Ish that like a pershonal assistant or sumthin’? ‘Cause, like, how hard ish it to hire someone to do that?” I asked as I twirled a lock of my hair on my finger. Then I looked down in faux confusion at my chest. “An’ I have great ashets! Daddy said they cost too much, but we have plenty of money. Umm… what were we talkin’ about again?”
“Your… uhh… business acumen?” Sam asked as he stared at my large chest. Poor Sandro was managing to follow most of the conversation but was having trouble keeping a straight face, let alone contributing.
“Oh! Right! Yeah, I can jus’ hire someone to be my Acu-man. I’m sure plenty of people would like t’ work under me, right, Sandro?” I exclaimed ‘drunkenly’ with a look toward my date. Sandro either didn’t take the bait or wasn’t quite fluent enough in English wordplay to realize my ‘mistake’. The others reacted with a range of blushes, awkwardly trying to conceal the bulges in their pants, and suddenly looked very distracted.
As luck would have it, that was when the host of the party approached our group, as I summoned a dizzy spell and leaned against Sandro. I assumed that he was probably just making his rounds of the guests, but then he slapped Andrew on the back, “Here you are, son! Thanks for keepin’ Sandro company, boys. Sandro here is the one who has been working on your birthday gift, Andrew.” Then he turned his gaze toward the two of us, his eyes roaming up and down my body. “We can exchange the keys for your payment a little later, Sandro. Why don’t you introduce me to your… companion for the evenin’.”
“Sí, Señor Frost, this is my date, Danica Holmes,” Sandro replied carefully. “Danica, this is Señor Frost.”
“Date,” I giggled at Sandro as I faked a tipsy smile and looked the man over. He was tall and darkly tanned with brown hair and eyes, like his son, but his hair was starting to recede, and he was starting to get a bit pudgy in the mid-section. “It’s a pleasure t’ meet you, Mr. Frost,” I offered with another giggle as I twirled a strand of my hair.
“You sound American,” the senior Frost said with an uncertain expression.
“Well, yeah!” I giddily replied as I snatched another glass of champagne from a passing tray and quickly downed it. “I’m from Florida; Daddy ish huuuuge in real eshtate there. You know, like, vacation rentals in Fort Louder… Lauderdale and shtuff. I used one of his places for Spring Break las’ year and it was awesome, but he wouldn’t let me this year, sumthin; about protecting his interests. Daddy ish way too protective of me sometimes, y’know?”
That’s… interesting. So, how did you two meet?” he pressed, causing all sorts of mental alarm bells. He sounded nervous for some reason, and he was being very obvious about digging for information about me.
If he wanted information, he would get it. I already had an entire story prepared about how Danica was visiting her grandmother and touring Cuba while she decided whether she wanted to bother with college or not. I faux-drunkenly babbled my way through that lengthy tangent before finally answering how Danica had met Sandro when her car had broken down a month ago and he had helped fix it.
“…anyway, I was in Pinar del Rio when Sandro called totally out of the blue and asked if I wanted t’ come to a party on a yacht with him. I was, like, ‘Of course,’ ‘cause I totally owe him for helpin’ me, and he’s a nice guy. Daddy says t’ always pay your debts and beshides, I haven’t been t’ a party like thish in, like, forever. I mean, nightclubs get so boring after a while, an’ I never really meet anyone interesh… fun at Daddy’s parties. Your yacht ish bigger than Daddy’s, but I’ve heard that everythin’ ish bigger in Texas, ish that true? Maybe I need to meet more...”
My inane rambling was cut off as our host beat a hasty retreat through the crowd, calling over his shoulder, “There’s someone over there that I need to talk to if you’ll all excuse me...”
He was making his way straight toward the man who had been watching us all night, causing me to frown. I leaned against Sandro, shifting things in my right ear just enough to give myself a realistic bout of dizziness and nausea. “Uhh… Sandro, I don’ feel sho good, I think… I need t’ sit down.”
Sandro quickly excused us from the conversation and helped me toward an empty table as he asked in what seemed like genuine concern, “Too much to drink, or are you seasick?”
“Neither,” I whispered back as he helped ease me into a seat. “Something is up, keep your guard up but try to keep acting concerned. Be ready to move when I give the word, I have a bad feeling about this.”
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
I placed my arms on the table and gently placed my forehead on them as if I was feeling sick. Keeping my breathing even, I subtly shifted my ears so they could focus on the conversation that our host was now having with the large man who had been setting off my flight or fight instinct all night, even though we had yet to meet face to face. After several attempts to shift my ears right to hear the conversation properly, I finally heard our host hiss, “…and now my son has taken an interest in that drunken idiot! And you won’t even tell me why they’re here, Carmichael!”
His conversation partner replied in a cold tone, “General Carmichael, and you would do well to remember that, Frost. When I asked you to invite Mr. Rojas to this party to pay him for his services…”
“Asked?!” Frost hissed, “Call it what it is, blackmail.”
“Well, if you don’t want your association with criminals to become public, then you shouldn’t have done business with them in the first place, Frost,” Carmichael countered smugly. “Relax, this will be over soon, and our deal will be done. I was hoping that Rojas would anticipate a possible trap and invite one of his contacts with a mercenary group that we are currently searching for to protect him, but it seems unlikely. A mercenary wouldn’t drink so much, and she’s young and soft. My people have been running her through facial recognition since she arrived, but she doesn’t match any of the MacArthurs’ known associates, or any mercenaries known to operate in the area. I’ll have to think of some other way to draw them out of hiding.”
“I held up my part of the deal…”
Frost was cut off as Carmichael snapped, “Yes, a deal is a deal. I’ll destroy the photos and once you can get Rojas alone to make your exchange, he’ll have an unfortunate accident.”
Fuck. So, this really was a trap for me all along. I could easily dive overboard and get away, but I had promised to be Sandro’s bodyguard, and I took that promise very seriously. I would have to keep him company during the exchange. If Frost was already being blackmailed, then he would likely try to meet with Sandro in a part of the yacht without camera coverage. Why get out of one blackmail situation to create another possible one by having someone killed where it could be filmed?
The lack of cameras would work to my advantage if I could hit them hard and fast enough. The million-dollar question was whether I could find a lifeboat or something to get Sandro safely away without being tracked while doing it. Or maybe I should try and take down this General Carmichael while I was close and had the opportunity. If he was the one in charge of hunting us down, that could throw the whole operation into chaos.
No, that would be foolhardy. Completely aside from all of the trouble that having a visiting American General murdered in Cuban waters might cause in the region, right now it would only serve to piss off both his men and his higher-ups. Better to wait to poke any potential hornet nests until we could get out of the country, or better yet, off Earth entirely.
It was better if I stayed under his radar for now and left him on the board. As long as he was in play, we had a name and a chance to track his movements and find out how much they knew about us, and where he was getting his information. That was an advantage that I didn’t want to give up unless it was an immediate life or death matter.
I had been quiet for several minutes now as I listened to the General’s conversation and considered various strategies. I was vaguely aware of Sandro sitting beside me and rubbing my back and when I focused on him once more, he still sounded concerned. “Is everything alright, Danica?”
I played it up for the cameras, which I was now certain had been put in place to monitor and assess me during the party. Mumbling something incoherent, I got Sandro to lean in close and then whispered, barely audibly with the conversations going on around us, “I need you to keep acting natural. This is a trap, for both of us.”
There was only a brief instant when he stopped rubbing my back. Probably not enough to be noticeable and he leaned in to whisper, “Are you sure?”
“Positive, I… uhh… bugged Frost during our conversation. The big guy he’s been talking to is looking for my family and blackmailed him into setting this up, hoping you’d invite one of us as protection.” I quietly conveyed.
“Mierda,” Sandro cursed under his breath.
“Once Frost gets you alone, they will try to kill you and drop your body overboard,” I whispered, pausing only to briefly speak a little louder and a lot more incoherently for a moment before returning to a whisper. “They don’t know who I really am yet, but if they find out, Carmichael there will reserve a private suite for me at Guantanamo Bay.”
If that happened, I would be in deep shit. I wouldn’t be able to hold my current transformation for more than another two hours at the most without a break and if I shifted back where Carmichael or his men could see, he would never let me go, especially with my shapeshifting ability revealed. I would be handing him everything that he wanted on a silver platter if I allowed myself to be captured.
~ Kara, are you still awake, my love? ~ I inquired of my mate along our mental link.
Her reply sounded deeply concerned. ~ I was just about to take over watching Maddie and Nat. What’s wrong, Naiya? It feels like you’re really worried about something. ~
~ Yeah, there’s a lot to worry about. ~ I replied with a grimace as I kept my face buried in my arms. ~ This party was a trap; someone was using Sandro to try to get one of us here. They have no idea who I am, but they plan to kill Sandro and things might get a little hairy here. I wanted to warn you, and I need you to give my parents and Uncle Jack a name. I think he may be the man in charge, or at least fairly high on the totem pole. General Carmichael. ~
~ A trap?! Are you sure that you’re going to be okay?! I could get Jenny to take over for Kieshala instead and Kieshala and I could come to… ~
I cut off my mate’s frantic offer with a firm, ~ No, Kara. How would you find me in time? And you would only be placing yourselves in danger of being exposed, or worse. I can’t rule out that there might be a sub or something following the yacht in case one of us decided to show ourselves. I’m working on an exit strategy. I won’t allow someone to capture me, and I’ll do my best to be careful. Just pass on the name to my parents and Uncle Jack, maybe we can use it to help turn this hunt around. ~
~ I… ~ she hesitated, but I knew that deep down she knew that I was right. ~ Fine, but you better come back to me, Naiya. The name was General Carmichael, right? Is there a description or anything else I should pass along? ~
~ He’s probably in his fifties or sixties, about six foot four and bulky, gray hair, clean shaven, and has a couple of small scars on his chin and another across the bridge of his nose. ~ I replied, giving her as much detail as I could.
~ Okay, I got it, Babe. I’m talking to them now, ~ Kara informed me.
~ Thanks, my love, ~ I told her as I summoned all of the love I felt for her and sent it along with my words. ~ I need to try to figure out a plan here before Frost comes to get Sandro for the exchange. I’ll try to keep you updated. ~
I let slip a small sigh as I tried to figure out how to get us out of this mess. I briefly considered killing whoever tried to kill Sandro, taking their clothes, throwing the body overboard, and impersonating them but that wouldn’t work for several reasons. First, this wasn’t some cheesy spy novel, and I wouldn’t know enough about any of Carmichael’s men to reliably impersonate them.
Another reason was that they were likely men. Even if I was willing to face dysphoria again by copying the shape of a man, it would be a very bad idea with my suspected pregnancy. It was why Kieshala had specifically wanted a female dolphin for me to learn to shift into one. Shifting into a form without a proper womb would endanger any fetus that I might be carrying. Once I started to show, full-form shifts would be out as well. I would still be able to change my general appearance and give myself legs if I had to, but I would have to avoid shifting my womb and the immediate area around it.
I would have to kill whoever Carmichael assigned to kill Sandro, and probably Frost as well if he stuck around. Then I would have to try to find something to get Sandro off the boat and on his way back to the city as soon as possible. I likely wouldn’t have much time before Carmichael gets suspicious about his men not returning to report that the deed is done. Moreover, I would have to try to do that without revealing my true nature to Sandro or anyone else.
I couldn’t let them get Sandro alone. If they tried to draw him off elsewhere for the exchange, I would have to make sure that I went with him. The party was confined to the aft area of the upper deck, which was where all those lovely hidden cameras were, so I figured that they would either try to take Sandro to the fore or one of the other decks. They would likely choose the main deck since throwing a body off the sun deck above us would risk calling attention to it even this late at night. My guess was they would try to get him to the fore of the main deck to avoid anyone from the party overhearing or seeing something they shouldn’t.
Sandro gently nudged my shoulder, and I raised my head. Frost was approaching, so my time to plan was up. I nuzzled closer to Sandro and silently cursed as he walked up to our table with his big fake smile. “Sandro, I hope you and Miss Holmes have been enjoying the party. I could have someone escort her to one of the guest rooms if she isn’t feeling well.”
“Nuuuuuu… I’m fiiiine. Jus’ a l’il tipshy,” I protested before giggling and gripping my date’s arm tightly. “Unlessh Shandro wants t’ come wif me.”
“Ah, yes. Well, Sandro and I have some business to complete, so if you’ll excuse us for a few minutes…”
“I wanna go wif Shandro. He ish my date,” I insisted as I clutched at his arm.
Frost’s smile was quickly giving way to a frown, as things started not going his way. Sandro quickly offered, “Danica knows about my business, and to keep my dealings secret, Señor Frost. This is just a simple exchange and won’t take more than a moment or two and then we might take you up on that offer of a guest room, to celebrate.”
I could see in Frost’s expression that he was mulling the problem over in his mind. He was the one who had insisted that they make the exchange at this party and that Sandro bring a guest. If he objected that he didn’t want any witnesses now, Sandro would get suspicious. He had also openly mentioned his business with Sandro in front of his son and two of his friends earlier. I had been there when he had done so as well, so being suddenly secretive about things now would be a huge red warning flag to someone like Sandro.
He had no choice but to let me come along if he wanted Sandro to walk into his trap. I was a massive complication though. I suspected that Frost would care less if I ended up as collateral damage, but he would very much care about the attention he would get if the daughter of a wealthy real estate mogul ended up dead or disappeared while at a party on his yacht. He couldn’t take any chances that I wasn’t who I said I was either because if I was then there would be hell to pay unless he could make it look like an accident or like I wasn’t there.
Given the impression that I had made on his other guests, the latter was unlikely, especially with the occasional selfies that I had taken and posted to Danica’s social media accounts. I had made sure that the cameras had caught me doing that too, to sell that I really was who I claimed to be. Social media is just as important for setting up a false identity in the modern world as a good fake ID since the first thing that most people look up is a person’s online presence. If you have a big enough friends list or enough followers it gives you validity, and Uncle Jack had hundreds of fake accounts to do that.
Frost gave in and led us away from the party and the cameras therein. As I had suspected, we were led down to the main deck and were making our way toward the fore of the ship along the starboard side. I clung to Sandro and occasionally stumbled, using one such occasion to remove the Beretta PX4 Storm Compact from my thigh holster. Once I could no longer spot any cameras and was able to confirm with my other senses that we were alone in the hallway, I pressed the gun into Frost’s back.
“If you try to do anything but answer my questions honestly, I’ll know, and you will regret it,” I stated coldly. “There’s no briefcase full of money waiting for Sandro, is there?”
“Wha...”
His surprised exclamation was cut off as I dug the barrel of my weapon further into his back. “Answer the fucking question, Frost.”
“No, I…” he started to reply as his right shoulder shifted ever so slightly.
I grabbed his shoulder with my free hand, squeezing hard enough that I could feel the bone starting to give and causing him to scream in pain. “Sandro, he’s got a concealed weapon, please relieve him of it,” I told my large companion calmly. Only once he had taken the concealed Colt 45 from our host did I stop squeezing. “You were about to tell us that it was a trap?”
“Yes!” he screamed, nodding frantically as I gave his shoulder another squeeze to encourage an answer.
I could have asked him about Carmichael, but I sincerely doubted that he knew anything useful, and I didn’t want to let on to my messenger that we now knew about who seemed to be in charge. “The deal with Sandro is off then. Any more answers that I don’t like, and I start squeezing hard enough to break bones, Frost. What’s the quickest way off this boat?”
I could hear his teeth grinding for a moment before he answered, “There’s a speedboat launch on the lower deck, at the aft of the ship.”
“Is it guarded?” I pressed.
“No, I…” There was a brief hesitation before his answer, his heart rate quickened, and there was a subtle change in his already fearful scent.
“Lie.” I squeezed his shoulder tighter until I could hear and feel bones cracking under the pressure. “Do you want to try that again?” He was too busy screaming to answer as he fell to the floor in agony, so I reached down, picked him up by the throat, and lifted him to face me, cutting off both his air and his screaming. He’d already answered my question anyway, the boat launch was very guarded, just in case I really was a mercenary and tried to escape.
“When you wake up, Frost, tell whoever put you up to this that they’re messing with the wrong people. If they don’t back off, they will pay in blood.” Once I was sure that he had gotten the message loud and clear, I pistol-whipped him with my other hand and dropped him to the floor.
Sandro was standing there gaping at me. “Madre de Dios, has anyone ever told you that you can be fucking terrifying?”
“Only when I have to kill people,” I replied casually. “We need to move; people may have heard his screaming. Once we get to the speedboat launch, there will be fighting. I’ll do what I can to cover your escape, you need to get back to land, grab what money you can quickly, and get the hell out of town. These guys know you’re associated with us, and if they catch you, they will torture you to get the information that they want.”
“Sí, just let me…” Sandro replied as he began to search the unconscious Frost.
I quickly interrupted whatever he was about to say. “Sandro, we need to hurry, I can’t…” Sandro’s head exploding made the words catch in my throat. “Fuck. I barely heard the shot, small arms fire but they must be using a suppressor. It came from the forward deck area; whoever was waiting there for Frost and Sandro must have heard the screaming and decided to check it out. Whoever it is, they’re a fucking good shot to make that shot with a handgun.”
I stood there for a moment, clenching my fists in anger when a voice called out, “Stop right there and keep your hands where I can see them!”
Going to the boat launch would be dangerous, it was what they expected me to do and there was likely a party waiting there in my honor from the way that Frost had lied about it. No, I was going to get off this boat another way, and I didn’t need a boat. I glanced over the railing to my right; it was a straight drop into the water, but I had something to do first. Sandro had been a good person for a criminal; he was even starting to feel like a friend. Whoever had just killed him was going to pay.
My vision was good, and there wasn’t much cover on the forward deck except for a bunch of beach chairs for sunbathing. The shooter’s voice had given away his general position, but it was possible that he wasn’t alone. It didn’t matter. I walked toward the sound of the voice, ignoring the warning shot that grazed my shoulder. It was already healing as I called out, “You made a big mistake. You killed a friend of mine and really pissed me off. Now, I’m pretty sure that your boss wants me alive, so you can’t risk killing me. I, on the other hand, can’t wait to kill you.”
His warning shot had been silent but still audible enough to my ears to give away his position. I could smell him now too, the sudden spike of fear that he couldn’t suppress, and fired a round through one of the chairs. I was rewarded with a hiss of pain and fired four more shots in the direction of the sound. At least one hit a sensitive spot, judging by the cry of pain and the change in the flavor of his scent. The smell of blood was strong. No other scents yet, so he was alone after all. Carmichael probably didn’t figure they’d need more than one man hiding somewhere to kill Sandro. I was the prize, and he wanted to cut off my escape.
My opponent wasn’t moving, either I had killed him by some fluke, or he was trying to formulate a plan. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear him breathing or shifting his weight as I approached, only the sound of pounding footsteps on the deck above me. Pursuit. I ran to confirm the kill and found a bloody mess of a man in the same type of suit that the servers had been wearing at the party. He wasn’t wearing body armor and I had gotten lucky with one of my shots. He wasn’t breathing, so my job was done, and I didn’t give him a second glance. Instead, I ran for the railing and dove over the side before anyone could arrive to see me making my exit.
I hit the water and kept my form human looking at first as I formed my gills, scented the water, and used sonar to ensure that there were no boats, or worse a submarine, tailing the yacht. There was a small boat, but it was a fair distance away so it wouldn’t be a problem. Even if Carmichael had divers at the ready, they wouldn’t be seeing any ‘mermaids’.
When I was sure that the coast was clear, I removed my clothes and shifted to dolphin form in the shadow of the yacht. Only once I had put some distance between me and Frost’s luxury boat, did I surface for air and to get my bearings. We hadn’t gone too far out to sea, so I was able to use my sonar, other boat traffic in the area, and then the lighthouse to make my way back to Havana’s port. From there it was relatively easy to get to my destination.
The water-resistant beach bag was right where I had left it, secured to a large rock underwater, not far from the beach near my hotel. Snatching it up, I found an isolated stretch of the beach with no late-night visitors and changed back into my Jessica form, and then the simple clothes that had been waiting in the bag’s waterproof pouches along with the keycard for my hotel room. I had already told Kara about what had happened on my way back to land and, once I returned to my hotel room, I was ready to pass out for a few hours. It had been a very long night.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
Five. That was the number of people who stank of military that I saw trying very hard to keep a low profile while they watched Sandro’s garage. As if I was stupid enough to slip up by coming here in a form that they could recognize. Well, unless they considered stray dogs to be possible sources of valuable information, they were going to be shit out of luck.
Yeah, I’m a bitch. While at any other time, this might be humorous, I needed to check on things here and make sure the loose ends had been cleared up, and this was the most subtle way that I could think of doing that. After I had woken up, eaten, and checked in with the family, it took me half the morning to find a female mutt that I thought might work with my mass restrictions and to get close enough to pet her. Then it took another hour in my hotel room to learn how to move somewhat properly in the form.
Now I was cooking from all this fur in this godforsaken heat, hungry, and I had no idea how I was going to get a vehicle with enough trunk space for my arms deal later tonight while Carmichael’s errand boys were watching the garage and the few of Sandro’s vehicle pick-up points that I knew about. So, I was feeling a bit bitchy while I did my reconnaissance. Thankfully, the garage was closed up tight, so it looked like Luis had taken my warning seriously and made a run for it.
Before collapsing into bed to sleep last night when I returned to my hotel after slipping through Carmichael’s fingers, I had retrieved my encrypted phone from the safe and called Sandro’s number. Sandro had been right to suspect something fishy and had left his phone with his right-hand man when he left for the party and warned him that I might call if there was trouble. Luis had been sleeping when I called but he was very awake by the time I finished telling him how things had gone to shit.
After telling Luis how his boss and cousin had been double-crossed and murdered, and just who was involved, I told him to destroy the phone, sim card, and the papers that Sandro had him keeping safe. I also told him to grab what money he and Sandro had stashed away and make a run for it, and to tell the other members of their gang to do the same. I had a feeling that bribes were now off the table, and anyone caught and suspected of having ties to us would be taken somewhere out of the way and rigorously ‘interviewed’.
If they still had that many people watching the garage, they were likely hoping that a big fish might still show up. I could only hope that meant that Luis had managed to slip out of Havana and was well on his way to somewhere safe. Speaking of getting somewhere safe, I needed to do that myself, now that I had scoped out the situation.
With that in mind, I continued on the street before turning at the next intersection and once I was out of sight, I backtracked to the quiet alley where I had hidden the ratty backpack that contained some dirty clothes and a small amount of cash in a cleverly concealed pocket. Keeping myself well hidden behind the dumpster, I quickly changed my form and then my clothes. Careful to ensure that the waifish Hispanic girl didn’t resemble any of the other disguises that I had used too closely, I went off to catch the metro bus that would take me back toward my hotel.
After buying, and then eating, enough food to feed three people, I changed my disguise back to Jessica once again and retrieved the keycard for my hotel room. I planned to spend the afternoon resting in my native form and rehydrating in a nice air-conditioned room. Then I would have a nice dinner ordered from room service, and when the sun finally set, I would leave the hotel again to prepare for my arms deal.
General Warren Carmichael fumed as Frost’s yacht made its way back into Havana Harbor. “Danica Holmes,” he thought angrily. The name alone was enough to re-stoke his anger, despite his fatigue. Somehow, that girl had managed to not only fool Frost, the other guests, and his men into thinking that she was some drunken socialite idiot, but she had fooled him as well. Even worse, the thrice-damned imposter had somehow managed to determine that it was a trap as well and had slipped through his fingers, and the only man who seemed to know anything about her was dead.
From what Frost had reported, she had been far more sober than she had any business being after drinking as much as she had, and she was strong and ruthless too, just like the young woman who had taken down the team sent to retrieve the MacArthurs’ daughter. She had left Frost alive to deliver him a message but had killed one of his best marksmen and escaped. Where did those mercenaries find these mere girls that could outclass his men so easily?
Somehow, on a goddamn boat in the middle of the ocean, with his best men waiting to cut off her only viable escape route, she had managed to vanish without a trace. He would have thought that she was saved by those damn mermaids, but the boat that he had following the yacht had assured him that their sonar detected nothing of note in the area. Unless she was saved by a goddamn dolphin or something, she had to have blended in or hidden on the yacht somehow.
He had his men do a deck-by-deck search, confirming every guest and checking everywhere that she might hide, yet despite searching all night and all morning, she was still nowhere to be found. He even had divers searching on the off chance that she had been shot and fallen overboard, but there was no body in the water and no sign of any blood that couldn’t already be accounted for. That girl would regret making a fool out of him, even if it was the last thing that he did. He would find Holmes and the MacArthurs, no matter what it took, and then he would enjoy getting them to reveal their secrets.
It would be easier if he could find the mermaids, he was sure they would lead them straight to the mercenaries, but so far, the search of possible locations and watching potential suppliers had turned up no leads. Harris said that the creatures emitted some type of unusual energy, but the man was a biologist, not an engineer and no progress had been made on detecting it yet, despite the bright minds that he had assigned to work with the fool. For now, it looked like he would have to do it the old-fashioned way, with boots on the ground and solid intel.
It was twenty minutes before midnight and I was parked outside of a rundown warehouse, waiting for my contact to show up. The vehicle was stolen, of course, one of those Chevy trucks from the early fifties that had been hot-rodded. It was sturdy, ran well, and I would probably be able to get all of my purchases in the truck bed. I didn’t even feel bad about stealing it since the owner had been a particularly handsy pimp who was trying to add me to his stable of girls. I guess that was what I got for going this the waifish local girl look while searching for a car to steal.
He had been following me for a while in that truck and I finally allowed him to ‘corner’ me in a dead-end alley. Let’s just say that once we were alone, I changed his mind about recruiting me with a little mood music. Now he was going to be working very hard to make it up to the girls that he had mistreated, beaten, and turned into addicts. I hoped that they could turn their lives around.
Currently, I was shifted into my Xenya Li form, dressed casually in dark clothing, and had any valuables that I hadn’t left in the safe in my room in a waterproof money belt that I had bought earlier. It was well out of sight beneath my clothes and the duffel bag with Aguila’s money was on the seat beside me. I wanted to finish this deal and get the weapons back to the villa.
It wasn’t just so the weapons were there in case Carmichael’s goons decided to pay us an unexpected visit, there were other reasons too. For one, I hadn’t been able to spend much time with my family, or my mate, over the past few days. I just wanted to spend a night snuggling in the pool with Kara as I drifted off to sleep and know that my family would all be close by when I awoke. Yes, Kara and I could always speak through our mental link, but it just wasn’t the same as being held in her arms.
Another reason was that I was worried about my sister and Natalie. Kara and I had spent most of the afternoon and evening while I was resting in my hotel room speaking with one another mentally. During that time, she had informed me that the more obvious physical changes had begun in both Maddie and Nat that morning. Their legs were beginning to fuse into tails, their gills had formed, subtle changes were starting in their faces and upper bodies, and their hair was starting to grow out and change color.
With their gills now formed and the outer changes beginning, Kieshala estimated another three days or so before their changes would be complete and we could wake them up, or they would wake up on their own as their new metabolisms rendered the drugs Mom was administering to induce a coma ineffective. Mom had moved them into the pool since they could breathe water now and it would make it easier for one of us Naethari to maintain contact until their changes were complete. I couldn’t help but feel that I should be there with my sister as she went through the last stage of her changes and when she woke up.
I was pulled from my thoughts by a pair of approaching headlights. After taking a deep breath, I shouldered the duffel bag and stepped out of the vehicle to approach the car that was now parked by the warehouse door. The man who stepped out of the car wasn’t Aguila, but I did recognize him. It was Enrique, the man who had searched me and escorted me to Aguila’s office back at the club. I wasn’t really surprised and imagined that Aguila was probably making his presence known inside his club at the moment, just in case something went bad with this deal, and he needed an alibi.
It was a smart move, and frankly, I didn’t care who would be making the exchange as long as I got what I came for. Enrique was careful to merely greet me and not invade my personal space after the threats I had made during our last meeting. In fact, he was all business and quickly unlocked the warehouse doors so we could go inside to look over the merchandise, count the payment, and make the exchange.
Despite my worst fears, the exchange went smoothly. Everything that we had agreed upon was there in carefully packed crates; semiautomatic handguns, assault rifles, RPGs, explosives, grenades, an M134 Minigun, and all of the associated ammunition that I had requested, plus my gift for Maddie whenever she woke up. Enrique even had the guards who were watching the warehouse help us get it all loaded in the back of the truck.
I was pretty happy with myself as I drove back to the villa, but not happy enough to make mistakes. I had the crates covered with a tarp, I kept to the speed limit, and I made sure to take a route that would avoid any cameras. Even when I got it home and unloaded, I didn’t have time to do more than hug my parents and Aunt Carmen, who had helped me to quickly unload the goods.
As much as I didn’t want to, I still had to go back into Havana to dispose of the truck somewhere and grab my things and my car from the hotel before I could finally come back to the villa and relax for a bit. I tried to make that trip as quick as possible, while still being cautious though. By two o’clock, I was back in my pink sports car and driving back to the villa and my family. It was nice to have a night where things ran smoothly for a change.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
When I returned to the villa, I was so tired that I just headed straight to the pool to snuggle with my mate and get some sleep. When I got there, I found everyone in a Naethari cuddle puddle around Maddie and Natalie, who had been placed in the shallow end of the pool so that their IVs and other medical-related stuff could still reach them somewhat easily. Because everyone was covering them to stay in physical contact while they were still changing, I wasn’t able to get a very good look at the changes in either of them yet.
I was too tired to go out of my way to do so, especially since the changes were supposed to be going faster now and they would likely have changed even more by the time I woke up the next morning. I found Kara’s signature aquamarine and sea green coloring at one end of the group and quickly stripped off my clothes, eased into the water, and allowed myself to shift back to my native form before snuggling up beside her. Kara turned around and wrapped her arms around me as her sleepy voice slipped into my mind, ~ You’re tense, Babe, long night? ~
~ Yeah, given how things have been going lately, I was expecting something to go horribly wrong all night, but I’m here in your arms now, so I’m ending it on a high note, ~ I replied as I melted into her embrace with a contented sigh. We stayed like that, just talking and cuddling for a while until we fell asleep in one another’s arms.
When I woke the next morning, everyone else was already awake. Well, not Nat and Maddie, but everyone else was up and about and had let me sleep. After the past few days, I greatly appreciated being allowed to sleep until I was fully rested, as much as I appreciated that there was a nice big breakfast, including a bucket of chilled shrimp, waiting for me by the side of the pool.
Kara and Kieshala were on cuddle duty with Maddie and Nat, so it was Jenny who led me to the very welcome morning feast. It was nice getting a chance to sit, relax, and talk to my sorta sister-in-law for a bit. “So, what have you been up to while I’ve been busy squirt?” I asked the emerald-hued Naethari girl.
She shrugged but replied as her mouth quirked up in a smile, “Mostly I’ve been on cuttle duty. But Kieshala has been trying to teach me stuff too. Common Naethari knowledge and stuff. It’s like being in a school, though with me as her sole student it’s pretty small scale.”
Wait. Were those fish puns? She had graduated from giggling at them to making them herself. Aww, kids grow up so fast. I allowed myself a hearty giggle and managed to shoot back, “Oi, the puns! You’re krilling me here, but I have to admit that it’s nice to see you coming out of your shell.”
Her answer was to laugh, stick out her tongue, and say, “I learned from the best, Sis.”
My eyes widened a bit at that, “Wait… Sis?”
“Well, duh,” she stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ve been with me and Kara since we all woke up in that pool, and the two of you are practically married. You’ve been as much a big sister to me as Kara has all this time. Kieshala said that when Maddie and Nat wake up you should both make it official since you’re mates now, and we really haven’t had much time to celebrate it ‘properly’. She wants to have you both do a Naethari wedding ceremony and have a big party to celebrate before something else can happen.”
“Don’t tempt fate, Jenny,” I said with a sigh. To be honest though, making it official and celebrating it with my mate and family did sound nice. “We can talk about it when they’re both awake and getting used to their new bodies.”
I finished eating while Jenny kept me company and the two of us chatted. Then I spent the morning just hanging out and relaxing with my fellow Naethari as we kept close to my sister and her girlfriend. I also got a good look at the changes in both of the Naethari-to-be.
My sister’s hair had definitely grown longer and had changed from her original ginger to a very familiar and eye-catching electric blue. I knew that she liked that color more than she was letting on while in disguise as our trainer. Her gills were looking good and while her face had gone through some subtle changes that made her a lot prettier, she still looked a lot like her old self. Even her faint freckles had stayed, though they now had a slight golden tinge to them and seemed more prominent.
There were subtle changes in her body shape too, like wider hips and a slight increase in her bust size, if I had to guess. She retained her generally fit appearance though, with the hint of hard muscles under her soft and pale skin. Her legs were also partially fused into a tail, with electric blue scales starting to grow in patches there and on her forearms. Her tail fins and Vuhac were starting to grow as well, though they were far from complete, and seemed to be a bright gold that matched the freckles on her face, chest, and shoulders. I had a feeling that Maddie was going to be very eye-catching once her changes were complete.
Natalie’s changes were progressing similarly, though her hair and the scales on her would-be-tail seemed to be coming in as a dazzling amethyst hue with nascent fins that were a hot pink that would likely rival the magenta of my hair and tail. Her figure had been somewhat slight before, but tall and nearly as fit as Maddie. Now it was definitely becoming more generous, while maintaining that fit look, much as Maddie’s was. The changes in her face were a little more obvious than with Maddie as her nose had gotten a bit smaller and less pronounced, her cheekbones slightly more prominent, her lips less thin and more plump, and her face shape, in general, had gone from oval-shaped to more heart-shaped. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have recognized her if I didn’t know for sure that it was her.
According to Kieshala, their faces and upper bodies had stopped changing for the most part, so this was likely a pretty good measure of what they would look like from now on. Their hair might continue to grow a bit, but now the changes were mostly focused on forming the tail, fins, and their vuhac. She seemed certain that their changes would be complete, and they would wake up sometime in the next two days. We would know that the changes were finished when they both woke up on their own.
Sadly, I couldn’t relax for the entire day since we still needed to be prepared in case Carmichael’s goons decided to show up. With that in mind, after lunch, I went through some more combat practice with my parents and Aunt Carmen, got familiar with some of our new weapons, and discussed tactics with the others. Uncle Jack had also managed to collate a ton of information on General Warren Carmichael for us all to study and get familiar with. Most of it was public stuff, but there were some bits of his early military records before he started getting into the classified stuff.
As I had discovered, he liked to think that he was smarter than his targets. He would either hit hard and fast with a numerical and tactical advantage or trap his enemies, often offering only one route of escape, which in turn would lead to an ambush or an inescapable second trap. He seemed to hold a special type of fury for those few enemies who had managed to outmaneuver him and he would chase them like an angry badger until he brought them down. I had to assume that I, or rather Danica Holmes, was now in that category after my escape on Frost’s yacht. It was a very good thing that Danica didn’t really exist.
Carmichael did have a family, a daughter, and two grandchildren, but targeting them to get him to back off was not an option that we were willing to entertain for several reasons. For one thing, we were better than that. You don’t target an enemy’s family, especially when they likely have no idea just how messed up their family member really is. Secondly, it was guaranteed to bite us in the ass later and would likely have the opposite of the desired effect on a man like Carmichael. Even if we were so inclined though, they were in the States and we were stuck hiding in Cuba for the foreseeable future, so it just wouldn’t be practical.
We also took turns making sure that the other Naethari became familiar with the handguns and assault rifles that we issued each of them and were able to get some target practice in. Each got a turn while the other pair stayed with Maddie and Nat, even Jenny. The youngest of us was a bit unsure about the whole thing but I didn’t see the big deal since we were showing her proper gun safety and how to use them properly and responsibly. Besides, Maddie and I had both started to learn self-defense and the use of weapons when we were younger than she was.
If those military assholes got the jump on us then every single one of us would have to know how to use those weapons to hold off an assault, and even Jenny knew the reality of our situation. We had three options if it came to that; die, live a miserable life in captivity for the rest of our very long lives, or kill every last motherfucking one of them. Guess what option we would be choosing.
Target practice went a lot better than I had feared. We Naethari were surprisingly stable on land when we had our tails coiled beneath us, and knowing the risks, even Kieshala and Jenny had a lot of incentive to learn to use the weapons. None of them were able to get more than the absolute minimum practice in to hit in the right general direction of the target though. We needed to conserve ammunition in case of an assault and as long as they had the fundamentals down, that was all that we could realistically ask for in this situation.
After dinner, I took my shift cuddling with Maddie and Nat. Though technically, all of us were there in one large protective cuddle pile around the pair as we talked, and Kara held me in her arms. Kieshala also brought up her idea for having a proper celebration and the Naethari equivalent of a wedding for Kara and me and, while we both agreed that we wanted to do that as well, we decided to wait to plan anything concrete until Maddie and Nat were awake and healthy.
The next day passed much as this one had, and it was nice to be spending some quality time with my mate and family. Maddie’s and Nat’s changes were progressing at a pace that Kieshala and Mom were both happy with, while I was trying to mentally hurry them along. I wanted to talk to my sister again. I wanted to know that she would forgive me for my stupidity the night that we were attacked and for what I had to do to save her.
I woke up in the arms of Kara for the third morning in a row and their changes looked nearly complete. Their fins were roughly three-quarters the size of mine and Kara’s, their scales had mostly grown in, and their lower halves were looking a lot less like fused legs and more like a proper tail. Kieshala guessed that they would probably wake up sometime in the middle of the night or sometime the next morning.
Oh well, I couldn’t stay and watch their scales fill in to kill time anyway. We were running low on supplies again with us Naethari eating so much, and Mom and Aunt Carmen had come up with a massive list of groceries and other things for me to retrieve in Havana. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn they were hosting a party. To be fair though, staples like sugar, eggs, and flour were a necessity and would help us to stretch our supplies longer.
Reluctant to leave my mate and my family again, I took the list and made my way out to my pink sports car to head back into the city. I wasn’t looking forward to the crowds or having to look over my shoulder and keep an eye out for danger. It needed to be done though. Right now, I was our lifeline, and my family needed me. I let out a long sigh as I put the car in gear and drove back toward Havana, muttering, “Once more into the breach.”
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
My first stop at an Agro Mercado went fairly well, if you count being stared at the entire time going well. At the moment I did since it meant that my cover was holding and, while I would much rather blend into the shadows and wear an easily forgettable face, I would probably be the last person that anyone with any undercover experience would think is hiding something. Beautiful people who stand out and drive flashy cars are the Hollywood version of spies.
In the real world, it is just not a realistic tactic, and people who want to fly under the radar keep a low profile, dress for the occasion, and do absolutely nothing that would make them stand out in any way. Sure, what I’m doing might work for someone infiltrating some high society event, or scamming some billionaire, but that’s because the key is to blend in with the people around you, so it generally doesn’t work anywhere else. It’s only been working for me so far because it’s so counterintuitive and I’m a shapeshifter who can hide my real face from all the cameras and change my look if things get too hot.
Still, it was nice to get back in the car and take a break from the flirty and confident act for a bit. With the back seat mostly filled with fresh fruit and veggies, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief at being alone as I drove toward the Supermercado Palco. I was a bit leery about going back there, but unlike the Agro Mercados, there was only one close by, and it was where the wealthy and the tourists shopped. If I went anywhere else, I would be pushing standing out to dangerous levels. There was only so far, and certain places, that I could push this strategy before people went from slightly awed to suspicious, and I would rather not cross that line.
After a relaxing break in the car and a filling meal, I arrived at my next destination. I had stopped briefly to get something to eat from a burger place and got it to go so I could find a quiet place to eat it in the car. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to revert to my true form and take a break from shifting because there were people around and I didn’t want to chance anyone seeing something that they shouldn’t. Ah well, it would have been too cramped in the driver’s seat to really relax with my tail out anyway.
Just like the last time I was there, the Supermercado Palco was busy, and the only thing that really made ‘Jessica’ stand out was my long magenta hair. At least the blonde eyebrows would likely make people believe that it was a dye job, not that humans generally have natural magenta hair. My cart was filled quickly, I had found everything on the list that I was given, and after finishing in the frozen foods section and buying a couple of tubs of ice cream as a treat for later, I was ready to check out.
It was as I was going through the checkout that I felt something odd. It was distant and faint, it almost felt like the sense of magic that I felt from other Naethari, but it was far too weak. A month ago, I had been too inexperienced to sense the spark of magic in people other than Naethari; I certainly hadn’t sensed it in Camille Hart. As I steadily progressed with both of my aetral though, my sense of magic in the world around me had gotten better, just as Kieshala had told us it would.
Was this the spark of magic I was sensing? Did the person even realize that they had it? Kara and I hadn’t, and Jenny was probably too young anyway. I was curious, but not nearly curious enough to try to find it. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. I might be a fish rather than a cat, but I wasn’t willing to take the risk, not with my family depending on me.
I was heading out the doors when a couple outside of the doors accosted me. The man was a tall Caucasian with light brown hair and darkly tanned skin, while the woman was a fairly tall and willowy Latina with shoulder-length black hair. It was the woman who interested me most though. She was the source of that faint spark of magic and the moment that our eyes locked, hers went wide and she unconsciously took half a step back. Was she afraid of me?
She was apparently too surprised to speak at the moment, so it was the man who asked, after a strange look in her direction, “Hi, you’re American, right?”
It was sweltering outside, and I didn’t really have the patience for this. Despite being dressed normally for tourists they both smelled like military to me, and the faint scent of gun oil, their general fitness, and their stiff posture all but confirmed it. For a moment, I was tempted to really confuse them by speaking in Chinese, but I could use this encounter to maybe gather some information, and running away would only make them suspicious.
“Yeah, San Francisco, born and raised!” I replied chipperly. I didn’t introduce myself though, since I wanted them to lead the conversation and see where it went.
“I’m Andy, and this is my fiancée, Juanita,” he replied with another sidelong look at his companion. Uh-huh, nice try, ‘Andy’, tell me another one. I didn’t see rings on either of them, so I was pretty sure that he was ad-libbing, and that the woman was usually the talker of the two. “We’re in Havana looking for some friends who went missing on a family vacation; could you tell me if you’ve seen any of these people recently?”
The photos that he practically shoved in my face were grainy surveillance photos from traffic cams, ATMs, and that sort of thing. Flipping through them, I saw Maddie, her parents, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen. There was also one of the selfies that ‘Danica’ had taken on the yacht and posted to her social media accounts.
I frowned, trying to look pensive as I looked over the photos, and then shook my head. “Sorry, but none of them look familiar. Have you checked with the local police?”
“The local police and government haven’t exactly been helpful,” Andy said with a frown. “So, we’ve been asking the locals and other tourists.”
“Well, I sure hope that you find them,” I offered with a weak smile.
“Thanks for your time,” he replied with another frustrated look at his companion.
“Anything for fellow Americans,” I cheerfully responded before walking briskly back to my car and putting the groceries in the trunk. A liberal use of my sense of smell didn’t detect the pair’s scents or any similar scents near my car and they hadn’t followed me through the parking lot, so I figured that I was still safe. If anyone had tampered with the vehicle while I was inside the store, their scents would have been all over it and the general area.
Still, that was far too close for comfort. As I made my way back to the villa, I took a roundabout route through the city and then the familiar route where my very distinctive car wouldn’t be caught on camera. I kept one eye on the rearview mirror the entire way to be sure I wasn’t being tailed.
Corporal Luiza Morales fell to her knees, like a puppet with its strings cut, as soon as the pink-haired woman was out of her sight. Private Adams frowned at her as she knelt there for a moment, thinking about that pink-haired girl, and what she had seen in her. “Corporal?” He asked once the woman was gone, clearly not happy about having to ad-lib while Luiza had been too stunned to speak. He obviously wanted to say more, but she outranked him, and it would be inappropriate.
“Sorry, Private,” she replied quietly. “I think this heat is just starting to get to me, I’m not used to all of this hair. Wait here while I go get us some bottles of water. Oh, and try to pay attention to the story I’ve been telling people all day so we’re consistent please, Private. We should be taking turns at this, and you screwed up by telling that woman I was your fiancée. Neither of us is wearing a ring.”
Even long afterward, while going about her current assignment of canvassing people, the young woman with the magenta hair remained on her mind. What was up with that enormous magical presence? It had been like staring into the sun. Was that person even human? According to her abuela, such a thing should not be possible.
Luiza’s abuela was a bruja; she had been taught the secrets of magic by her own abuela before leaving Mexico for a better life in the United States. Being able to use magic was a rare gift but Abuela had told Luiza that, out of all her grandchildren, Luiza alone possessed that gift, and she had trained her to use it and to sense it in others before she left this world when Luiza was fifteen. With that training had come a warning though.
Magic was fading from the world; Abuela blamed modern technology and said that the life of the world was fading. Luiza would never be able to do some of the things that her abuela had been able to do in her prime. People who were actually strong enough to do even basic magic were becoming rarer and rarer. Many who possessed the gift were too weak to realize that they even had it, much less do anything with it.
Then there was the pink-haired girl. She radiated magic. The light of magic in those who did not have enough of a gift to realize they had it were like drops of water, barely even noticeable to someone who did, and even then, Luiza could do little more than pity them. Luiza herself was more like a shot glass full, her abuela had been strong and her light was like a full glass of water, but the pink-haired girl was like the ocean. The mere thought that anyone could be that touched by magic was terrifying and left her feeling very insignificant.
The pink-haired girl could feel the magic in Luiza too; she could see it in those blue eyes. She had been interested, curious even. Even if Luiza had been able to speak at that moment, she knew that she couldn’t have. If she tried to talk about magic in public with some total stranger, Private Adams would think her crazy and she had no doubt that it would become another in a long list of rumors about her circulating among her peers.
Luiza had heard the rumors before; she was a lesbian, she was really a dude, she was sleeping her way through the ranks, and several others. They were sadly not uncommon rumors for a woman among the rank and file of the military. As much as they like to say that that type of bullshit doesn’t happen in the military anymore, it does. It, and worse, happened to servicewomen just like Luiza all too often, and then was quietly swept under the rug. And fighting back, even through the proper channels, was more likely to see the victim’s name dragged through the mud by her superiors than see any sort of justice done. Just like…
She shook her head as if to clear it of those burgeoning thoughts and the anxiety and shame that would come with them. “Another three months,” she told herself grimly, “and then I’ll be done with active duty and can keep my head down in the reserves until my service is up.” It was ironic how she joined the army out of high school to get away from a shitty life in the LA ghetto and get some direction in her life, and now she couldn’t wait to leave, for much the same reason.
The shake of her head helped in a way. It allowed her to focus on physical discomfort rather than mental. The damn wig she was wearing was itchy and hot, and playing tourist and gathering information in Cuba during a heat wave was not what she signed up for. At least she wasn’t acting as General Carmichael’s glorified personal assistant right now as she had been since their arrival. Especially with the foul mood that he had been in since returning from the party on Aaron Frost’s yacht.
She had seen three fucking years of combat and now she was reduced to his personal errand-girl. Worse yet, she still had no idea why they were even in Cuba because Carmichael didn’t think women belonged in combat and her only use was fetching him coffee or files. “Three more months,” she repeated in her mind. Counting down the time had become her mantra, and trying to solve the puzzle of why they were here had been her only distraction.
Supposedly, they were trying to bring in some mercenaries who had been hiding in Cuba for the past month for questioning, but she had no clue as to why. The photos that she had been showing people all day long were the only real information that she had. She had of course heard the rumor that someone or something had wiped out one of their strike teams when they went to collect a target, so maybe these mercs shouldn’t be underestimated. If they had managed to stay hidden so well up until now, why would they repeat a mistake by showing themselves now that they knew they had to deal with strike teams?
Except, from the sound of the General’s ranting when he had given her this assignment last night, one of those mercs had shown up at the trap/party that he had planned on Frost’s yacht. Not only that, but she had vanished without a trace and made a fool of General Carmichael and the men he had brought with him. Danica Holmes’s picture was newly added to the collection, and the mere mention of her name made the General red in the face, the thought of which very nearly brought a smile to Luiza’s face. She stifled it before it could fully form since she was still under his command and had a job to do, and that would require her looking concerned for their missing ‘friends’.
As the afternoon passed onward into evening though, Luiza’s thoughts kept drifting back to the pink-haired girl. She needed to know who, and what, she was. If this young woman was as powerful as she seemed, then she could probably answer questions that had been unanswerable since Luiza’s abuela died. Perhaps she could look for her once she was off duty for the night. Searching for a source of magic that large couldn’t be too hard, especially if she was staying in the tourist area of Havana. If not, she still had her own small magic to work with.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
It was late afternoon, almost evening when I finally returned to the villa. Once I had helped my parents and Aunt Carmen put the groceries away, I gathered everyone by the pool and told them about the encounter outside the Supermercado Palco. “Well, we had to expect that they would start passing our pictures around the general public with a fake story once they couldn’t get any of our known associates to give us up,” Uncle Jack said with a sigh of resignation.
“Hmmm…” Dad murmured with a thoughtful expression before finally asking, “Do you think that you were followed?”
I quickly shook my head. “No, I didn’t smell any traces that anyone but me got too close to the car while I was inside the store and they didn’t follow me through the parking lot. I watched for a tail and drove all over the city before taking an unmonitored route here. I may not be as experienced at this stuff as the rest of you, but I’m certain nobody followed me.”
“They didn’t seem overly interested, or suspicious of you, did they?” Mom inquired.
“Honestly, the encounter was kinda weird in that regard,” I admitted with a shrug. “I don’t think that the guy was too bright, and the woman was in charge. He seemed more concerned with the fact that he had to come up with a story on the spot than with whether I might be suspicious. He seemed bored more than anything and just accepted it when I said I didn’t know the people in the photos. The woman is where the weirdness comes in though.”
“Weirdness?” Kara asked from the pool where she leaned on the side with her tail draped around Maddie in the shallow end.
I considered how to phrase my reply for a moment before confessing, “I think that I felt the spark of magic in her. It was faint, but it felt like the dormant magic inside of us when we’re not actively using it. Now, here’s where things get weird; I could swear that she sensed my magic too, or maybe the primal growth energy we produce. Is that possible, Kieshala? She just gaped at me the whole time and had this sort of half-awed and half-terrified look on her face.”
“It is possible, anything is possible where magic is involved, though I do not know how likely it is. The magic in this world is nearly gone, people who normally would have shown magical talent, like you, Kara, and Jenny do not seem to even realize magic exists because its presence has grown so faint. Someone with a high degree of talent might be able to sense the magic from us, but they would have had to be trained in using magic, or at least sensing it,” the sunset-hued Naethari conceded with a frown.
Mom wore a similar frown “Well, it’s a good thing that you got so many supplies today, Naiya. It’s probably a good idea for you to avoid going to Havana for a few days, given this new information. If she’s working for Carmichael and knows what he’s looking for, she might just put two and two together after your encounter. She might not think ‘mermaid’, but it is likely that she’ll believe that you’re something supernatural, and if Carmichael believes that she can sense magic, he will make the connection and use her to hunt you girls down.”
A sigh of relief slipped out from between my lips. Staying at the villa and keeping a low profile for a bit suited me just fine. Truthfully, I was getting exhausted going all around Havana and having to cover my tracks all of the time. I needed to spend some time relaxing with my mate and my family and take a break from all this undercover stuff. I also wanted to be here for my sister and Natalie when they woke up for the first time as Naethari.
“Yeah, staying out of the city for a while sounds good,” I agreed as I slipped out of my clothes and into the pool, changing back to my base form to snuggle against my mate.
We had a relatively quiet evening after that decision was made, unless you count Dad and Aunt Carmen setting up some of the weapons I had bought in preparation for a possible assault. With my close call earlier, and Maddie and Nat still finishing their transitions into Naethari, they thought it best to be prepared with some proverbial (and literal) landmines for when the other shoe eventually dropped. Hopefully, Carmichael would step on one if he discovered where we were and made a move.
It was almost two in the morning and I was just starting to doze off, snuggled close to Kara as we Naethari had formed a cuddle pile half-covering Maddie and Natalie, when I felt movement beneath me. My eyes shot open as I realized that the movement had come from my sister and she moved again, squirming beneath the mass of Naethari spread out and covering her and Natalie. My eyes shot toward her face as she let out a soft moan, causing a stream of bubbles to slip from between her lips.
~ Maddie?! ~ I thought toward her, half in a panic as I tried not to wake the others and my heart thumped in my chest with worry and hope.
“N-Naiya?” her voice, hoarse from disuse and slightly distorted beneath the water, replied uncertainly as electric blue eyes with flecks of gold fluttered open. “H-how? I was sure I was going to die there.”
I shifted position to wrap my arms tightly around her in a hug and cried a deluge of happy tears as the words spilled from my mind in a torrent of guilt and worry since I was sobbing and sniffling against her too intensely to speak properly. ~ I’m so sorry, Mads! It was all my fault! If I had been paying attention, instead of being distracted and complaining about the heat, you wouldn’t have had to protect me! I… I had to use my venom and my blood to turn you; I wasn’t going to let you die! ~
Apparently, she had understood me, and her eyes narrowed and her face scrunched up in a very familiar expression of anger on her new features. “No!” she hissed, a stream of bubbles from her mouth seeming to punctuate that simple statement. “You are not going to blame yourself for this, Naiya. We got ambushed because I got sloppy, end of story. Of course, I protected you, you lovable dolt! You’re my sister, and I wasn’t about to let you die either!”
She took a deep breath to calm herself and wrapped her arms around me tightly, whispering softly in my ear as she rubbed my back. “Thanks for saving me, Sis, and stop beating yourself up about it. It’s not like I wasn’t planning to become a Naethari soon anyway and you did what you had to do.”
“I… know… it’s just…”
Maddie cut off my sniffling protest. “Stop blaming yourself! It was a shitty situation, but you somehow got us out of it and we’re both still alive. That’s all that matters. How did you get us out, by the way? Things are a bit fuzzy after you jumped their leader.”
I explained to her in graphic detail just what I had done to the team that had attacked us, the trap I had set for the sniper that shot her, and everything else until the point when our parents, Aunt Carmen, and Uncle Jack had retrieved us from the motel. “So, then Mom got you hooked up with the medical stuff, and one of us Naethari has been staying by your side since,” I finished, no longer crying, but trying to keep my voice down to not wake the others.
My sister smiled and squeezed me tightly in her arms. “You handled yourself like a pro, Sis, I’m proud of you. I was hoping to do the whole transition thing with Nat, but at least I’m alive.”
“She’s right there beside you, Mads,” I told her, returning her smile with one of my own as I gently turned her head toward the still-changing amethyst-haired Naethari with hot pink fins. “She really wanted to do this with you. She should probably wake up in a few hours, or lunchtime at the latest.
“That’s Nat?! Holy shit, she’s changed!” Maddie whisper-yelled.
“Duh, Mads, or I’d still be Jon. That’s her ideal Naethari body, and her hair and fins are her favorite colors, just like the rest of us. Speaking of which, I knew that you liked that electric blue more than you were letting on, and the gold fins make a nice contrast on your tail,” I teased, glad to be able to talk to my sister like this again.
Maddie snatched up a handful of her now long, electric blue hair and just stared at it for a moment. “Wait… so how much have I changed?”
“Not much in the face or general build, except for the tail, the fangs, and the ears of course,” I assured her, displaying my own fangs by opening my jaws wide and tucking wisps of magenta hair behind my long, swept-back, elfin ear in demonstration. “Most of your changes are a lot more subtle, but you were always pretty comfortable in your own skin. Your freckles are, like, bright gold now though, just like your fins.”
“Okay… I really need to see a mirror now,” she quietly murmured as she continued to stare at her hair.
I shook my head as I stifled a yawn. “In the morning, Mads. We should both get some rest, your body has been through a lot and tomorrow we’ll have to teach you and Nat how to use those new tails properly. We still have people after us, and the sooner that you can both keep up with the rest of us in the water, the better. We’ll get you both up-to-date on everything that happened while you were out too.”
My sister sighed but conceded. “Okay, Naiya. Good night, Sis, I love you, and… thanks for saving me.”
“I love you too, Mads, and I’m glad that you’re back with us,” I replied and I hugged her once more.
It was a little after nine o’clock in the morning when I was awakened by Jenny squealing excitedly, “They’re awake!”
My eyes snapped open, and I quickly joined my fellow Naethari in swarming our two new clan members with hugs. A minor stampede of footsteps rushed toward the pool from the direction of the living room and Kieshala’s mind voice sternly suggested, ~ Let us not crowd them, girls, ~ as if she hadn’t been in on the hugging too.
Still, we all backed off to give them some space, and to allow the pair of newly Naethari girlfriends to get a good look at one another. They did have to endure another round of hugs from Mom, Dad, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen though, once Dad and Aunt Carmen had picked the pair up out of the water and sat them on the edge of the pool. Mom and Dad looked like they never wanted to let go of Maddie again once they had her in their arms, and I couldn’t blame them. Her near brush with death had had us all understandably worried and scared for her.
Once they were finally freed, the pair stared at one another for several minutes before Natalie opened her arms to hug Maddie, only to fall face-first into her lap. “Remember that you will have problems controlling your tails at first,” Kieshala cautioned, just a little bit late.
“Yesh, I can shee tha’,” Natalie grumbled before Dad helped to get her face out of its precarious position in Maddie’s lap and set her upright again.
“What’s the plan for that, Kieshala,” Kara asked the older Naethari.
“We should all eat first, Maddie and Natalie will need their energy today,” Kieshala replied after a moment of thought. “Then we can start them on tail and fin exercises for a while before we get them into the water to try swimming. We can alternate those, and… meditation, to get them searching for the weave of magic within them so they can start training their aetral as well. Once they are ready to train their aetral I should be able to help guide Natalie, but Maddie will need her sister’s help.”
I was looking at Kieshala in confusion as my sister asked, “So, you have some idea what our aetral are then?”
“Yes, the weave of magic in both of you is familiar to me. Natalie is a Tidebreaker; they can manipulate and direct water with their minds. Maddie is a Shifter, so I believe that Naiya will be able to help her learn better than I can,” she replied with a smile.
Maddie turned to me and grinned. “Cool! You can show me how to get legs again, well, at least for a little while.”
“Well, if you work very hard at learning to use your tail first, I’ll think about it,” I teased.
With that, we all got to work. Mom and Aunt Carmen went to the kitchen to start making enough breakfast for all of us, while Uncle Jack and Dad went back to what they had been doing before Jenny’s excited screaming summoned them, and Kieshala started teaching the two new Naethari the basics of how to move their tails and fins. Kara, Jenny, and I went to gather some fish and shellfish from the lagoon to add to the meal.
Okay, yes, it might sound like we were getting a bit of payback for them feeding us all that fish and stuff while we were Pierce’s captives but watching them try to choke it down the first time would just be a bonus. They were Naethari now, so they would need to get used to eating raw seafood. There wouldn’t be any pizza places or fast food joints under the sea, especially if we managed to leave Earth and go to Totha.
Once we had returned from our brief hunt, I carried in a plastic tote filled with the fruits of our labor while Jenny and Kara slither-crawled back to the pool. We would need to teach them that too, so they could get around the house and be somewhat mobile on land. After I dropped the tote off by the poolside, I went to retrieve a large crate from the garage, glad of my strength as I pulled it along into the poolroom and to the poolside.
The human food portion of breakfast wasn’t quite finished yet and I arrived back just in time to see Maddie and Nat looking dubiously at the fish that my mate and her sister were holding out to them while grinning evilly. “This is revenge, isn’t it?” Nat said with a grimace. “Come on, girls; remember who snuck you in chocolate, pizza, Chinese food, and other treats.”
“You will need to get used to eating it sooner or later,” Kara replied reasonably, but the smile was still there.
“Fine, give it here,” Nat said with a shudder as she snatched the fish in question from my mate. Then she opened her mouth as wide as only a Naethari can and took a big bite. Her expression morphed from disgust to a considering look, and then to resignation as she shrugged. “It’s not bad.”
“Nope, no way. If it has to be sooner or later, I prefer later,” Maddie said as she crossed her arms, wrinkled her nose, and stubbornly shook her head at Jenny’s offered fish. “I like my food to be cooked.”
I wasn’t surprised at her answer since I knew that my sister could be picky about food. We both hated the survival camping trips while growing up when Mom and Dad made us all live off whatever we could manage to hunt and gather in the wilderness. Despite the often-dubious menu, I had fond memories of those trips too though, because my birth mother would always make us a nice treat when we got home, and it was time when the five of us were together as a family without Mom and Dad having to leave on some mission. We had those moments at home too, of course, but those survival trips had always stood out in my mind.
The upshot is that I knew that when Maddie got like this, she would need to be bribed, just like my mother used to do. “Mads, if you eat the fishy, you can have the present that I got for you while you were out,” I said with a grin as I tapped the long crate that I had dragged in
Maddie looked distastefully from the fish to the crate and gave me a suspicious look. “What kind of present?”
“I made an arms deal, Mads!” I told her excitedly. “I was a total badass and got us all sorts of weapons to use on the assholes after us! I saw this on his list of goodies, and I couldn’t resist! It’s a Barrett M107A1 anti-materiel rifle with a suppressor, a scope, and a monopod. It’s got plenty of ammo too. Just think of what you could do to our enemies with this, and you don’t even need to stand up to use it. It’s like your sniper rifle, only more badass! Soooo… are you hungry, Mads?”
Maddie ate the fish.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” my sister admitted as she ate her fish and glanced longingly at her bribe. “It’s kinda chewy but it doesn’t taste terrible. It’s kind of tasty, actually.”
“Yeah, we think that the transformation probably altered our taste buds along with everything else,” Kara offered with a shrug. “I really like oysters when we can get them, but I certainly never would have eaten them raw before becoming a Naethari.”
“Yep, and I would have thought the same about shrimp, but they’re, like, one of my favorite foods now,” I added.
“Yes, Babe, you have made your preferences obvious to everyone, right Nat?” Kara teased before kissing me affectionately.
Natalie didn’t reply as it seemed that her attention was elsewhere at the moment. That elsewhere was Kara’s belly, and mine, and the rashes that still lingered there on us both. She looked very concerned about it as she furrowed her brow and her amethyst eyes focused on them. “I thought those were supposed to fade after your kima’tah was over. It has been well over a month if Maddie and I were out as long as I think, but they’re still there. Are you two sure that you’re both feeling alright?”
Uh-oh, she was going into doctor/caregiver mode again. Honestly, I admired that about her, especially because it wasn’t like it was her job any longer. She cared, and she was worried about us as her friends. The problem was that neither Kara nor I wanted to get anyone’s hopes up about us possibly being pregnant until we could be sure, especially since if we were pregnant the babies wouldn’t be due for a year, and a lot could happen in that time.
Kieshala quickly interjected for our sake. ~ I am not an expert on the third metamorphosis, or the kima’tah, ~ she gently reminded the marine biologist-turned-Naethari. ~ I have gone through neither myself yet, so most of my information is based on the experiences of others, and those can be varied. ~
“But something could be wrong with them,” Natalie protested, unwilling to let go of this. “Hell, they could even be pregnant, and this could…”
My jaw dropped at that guess and both Kara, and I quickly looked away. It seemed that my sister was as observant as always though as she interrupted her girlfriend. “No way! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re both knocked up but you don’t want to tell us for some reason!”
“So that’s why you’ve both been eating so much lately!” Jenny added as she fit another piece of the puzzle and the flimsy hold that we had on our secret slipped out of our control. Jenny is a smart kid, but I kind of wished that she hadn’t said that because it only seemed to cement the theory in Maddie and Natalie's minds.
“We… suspect that’s the case, but we... uh… didn’t want to tell anyone until we were both sure,” Kara admitted with a blush now that the catfish was out of the bag.
I sighed and nodded in agreement, as I pulled my mate closer and tried to explain our reasoning. “With Naethari pregnancies lasting thirteen months or so, it will be at least a couple of months before we can confirm those suspicions using sonar. We didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, or for our parents to get super protective of us. It’s just a guess until we can confirm it, and honestly, a lot could happen in the next year, especially with some assholes from military R&D after us now.”
Shortly after that, Mom called us for breakfast and Dad and Aunt Carmen carried my sister and her girlfriend to the table since they couldn’t get around very well on their own yet. We hadn’t even gotten to the food part yet when Maddie spilled the beans. Not that we were eating any, the beans she spilled were of the secret variety, which led to a heated discussion where Dad and Uncle Jack wanted Kara and I, along with Jenny, out of harm’s way if there was a possibility of combat.
“We’re pregnant, not invalids, and we aren’t even sure about that yet,” I said as I glared at my sister. I knew that she was just being protective of us, and that full disclosure was probably even a good idea to take precautions to keep the possible babies safe, but Dad and Uncle Jack were talking about keeping us both locked up someplace safe with Jenny while everyone else mounted a defense if those assholes found us.
To my surprise, Mom came to our defense. “Max, Jack, get your heads out of your fucking asses. Naiya is no less competent or dangerous than before just because she might be pregnant. You both know damn well that I was doing missions until I was five months along with Madelyn, and we need every gun and every advantage that we can get in our current situation. She can go places we can’t, and she can probably protect herself and her mate as well, if not better, than any of us can.”
Dad looked ashamed of himself, and Uncle Jack was thoughtful as Maddie nodded and put in, “What I was trying to get at when I dropped that little bomb is that we need to start working on plans to take this fight to our enemies soon. We have more information on them than they do on us and we can’t just sit back and wait for much longer. The longer this goes on, the more chance that they will find us and that this will become a danger to Naiya, Kara, and the babies. We need more information, a plan of attack, and a solid exit strategy while we still have some sort of advantage.”
“We can barely move on our own right now, Maddie. We’re probably way more of a liability than Naiya and Kara are,” Natalie helpfully pointed out.
My sister gleefully grinned at her girlfriend and retorted, “I can still use a gun, and I’ve got a nice big new one that I’m itching to try out on these assholes after they shot me. Payback is a bitch, and bitches love cannons.”
In the end, we decided to table further discussion until the next day so we could all take some time to consider our situation, options, and possible plans that would lead us to a happy ending and give Carmichael the bad ending that he rightfully deserved. Uncle Jack was hoping to find us some more useful information on Carmichael as well.
During breakfast, Kieshala had Nat and Maddie work on their tail and fin exercises under the table and once we had all finished eating, she had them both attempt to swim for the first time. It was not easy for them, I remembered well those first moments where I had tried to adjust to moving with a tail and fins under water, instead of on legs and land. Since this was their first day as Naethari, they were both exhausted and in need of a break after an hour or so.
Since Maddie had eaten her fish earlier and worked so hard, I showed her and Nat the basics of half slithering and half crawling for land-based locomotion so she could open her present and have a look. That too was an awkward affair for them, and their tails were still too weak to support their weight so they could coil and sit upon them as we more experienced Naethari could do on land. I had to open the crate for her and then Maddie had to somewhat lean over it so she could inspect her new toy and check its condition.
“Sweet, this thing is a beast, and it even has a decent carry case to protect it from the elements. I can’t believe that you made an arms deal, Sis. You’ve grown up so much while I was out,” my sister said with a pride as she familiarized herself with the anti-materiel rifle.
“I got Dad a minigun,” I shot back with a grin.
“No fucking way! Seriously?!” she squealed with glee. “We are going to fuck these assholes up. You made sure that the weapons weren’t being tracked, right?”
“Of course, Mads. What do you take me for, a complete greenhorn? I looked through the crates and inspected the weapons myself and we ran bug sweepers over them just to be sure.” Then I let out a sigh and told her sympathetically, “Sorry, Mads, but playtime is over now. Just because you’re tired doesn’t mean training is over, you know that. Now it is time for something that I know you’re going to hate as much as I did. I’m going to help you to find the weave of magic inside yourself so I can start teaching you to use it.”
For the second night in a row, Luiza returned to her hotel room, stripped off the disguise and horrid wig that she had been made to wear for questioning the tourists and locals, showered, and got dressed in casual clothes that were more her style. The light hoodie and jeans that she had bought on the way to the hotel were casual and low-profile, and once she had properly showered off the day’s sweat, she could be certain that there was nothing in the clothes that would allow her commanding officer to track her while she was off duty. She wouldn’t put it past the misogynistic asshole to have someone tracking her (for her own safety), but this was a personal matter, and she didn’t want General Carmichael finding out about any of this.
Still, she was grateful that they were staying in a hotel in Havana rather than at the base at Guantanamo Bay. That base, and what went on there, made her extremely uncomfortable and ashamed to be a soldier. The people that the General was looking for were last seen in Havana though, and he wanted himself and his senior staff on location for the investigation, even if most of them had no idea what he was after here. It couldn’t just be the mercs, not unless they had stolen a prototype or something from R&D. Strike teams were staying on the base though and were airlifted in when he had need of them, like for his failed trap that the Holmes girl had escaped.
Like the night before, Luiza was going in search of the woman with magenta hair from the Supermercado Palco who radiated magic. She wanted answers. She wanted to know who and what the woman was and how she could have that much magic at her beck and call when the rest of the world was starving of it. Was she even human, or was she some fairy creature? Luiza was burning with curiosity and the need to have her questions answered.
Despite traveling the length and breadth of the tourist area of Havana last night, Luiza had not felt even the smallest spark of magic. Either the magenta-haired woman was very good at hiding her magic, or she wasn’t there at all. Luiza suspected the latter since she hadn’t bothered trying to hide it when they met. In fact, she had seemed as surprised and curious by Luiza’s magic as she was of hers. So, since it seemed unlikely that she would find her target the easy way, she had something else planned for tonight, something that would require quiet and privacy.
It was after 10:30 when Luiza picked up the small backpack that she had bought earlier with the clothes and filled with the tools necessary for her search, and then slipped out of her hotel room. After leaving the hotel and making certain that she hadn’t grown a tail, she made her way to one of the places that rented scooters and such for tours of Havana. After renting a Vespa that seemed to be in good condition, she found a quiet spot alongside the beach to get to work.
Her search would be easier if she had a strand of the woman’s hair or something else connected to her, but the spell she had in mind should work just as well for her purposes. She removed a needle, a length of thread, some salt, and a bottle of water from the backpack and quickly got to work. She started by taking a couple of sips from the water, then pouring the salt inside, and mixing it thoroughly. Once that was done, she tied the needle securely to the thread before immersing it in the salt water and chanted the words of power that her abuela had taught her to cleanse the needle of any negative energies.
More words of power followed when she finally removed the needle from the water by the string. This was the hard part. She needed to channel her magic into the needle while chanting those words and focusing her mind on what she wanted to find. Had she had something connected to the magenta-haired woman she would be searching for her, but in this case, less specific was better. So Luiza focused instead on finding any nearby sources of magic, hoping that it would lead her to either the woman herself or her source of power.
Luiza’s eyes shot open as the thread that the needle was secured to was nearly pulled from her grip. The thread was stretched taut and was drawn eastward so either what she was looking for was very close or very potent. It seemed to be the latter, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, given her earlier encounter with the woman and the magic she could feel from her.
For over an hour and a half, Luiza followed the pull of the needle, sometimes having to stop to reorient herself. Her path led out of the city, and she probably would have missed the small road that branched off the highway if she hadn’t felt it. The needle was no longer necessary; she could feel the power that was being radiated from where she stopped at the roadside to catch her breath from the sheer magnitude of it. It was familiar but massive, far more potent than what she had felt from the magenta-haired woman. She was there, she was not alone, and whoever else was with her was at least as powerful as she was.
Luiza was unsure of how long she sat there on the Vespa by the roadside, attempting to steel herself to approach the magic and the answers she sought. She was eager, but she was also scared out of her mind. If these people were as powerful as she thought and they didn’t want her there, they could probably end her easily. The woman with the magenta hair seemed nice enough, and curious about her, during their short encounter, but how much of that was an act? What if these people were a threat?
She needed to make a decision, and she couldn’t stay out here all night. The one she had met before hadn’t seemed to sense her power until they were nearly face to face, or at the very least didn’t know it was coming from Luiza until then, so maybe they didn’t know she was out here yet. She could go for help and try to explain things to the General. Or she could try to get her answers and risk the possible wrath of magic users that dwarfed her power so excessively that it was almost hilarious. “Time to shit or get off the pot, Lu,” she told herself as she tightly gripped the Vespa’s handlebars. A moment later, her decision was made.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
Luiza had taken too long making her decision and the choice was taken out of her hands as a voice that she recognized called out from the thick rainforest that bordered the road between her and the property where her target waited. Or rather, where she had waited until Luiza had stayed frozen in fear by the roadside. She had been so preoccupied with the conflict within her mind that she had failed to sense one of the massive magical presences separate itself from the others and approach her through the trees.
The voice of the magenta-haired woman sounded very unhappy, or at the very least annoyed, as she called out, “Corporal Luiza Morales, what an unexpected surprise. What are you doing skulking outside of our home? Answer quickly, and if I think that you’re lying, don’t like your answer, or if it otherwise pisses me off, I will kill you where you stand.”
Luiza started in surprise. She hadn’t even heard the other woman approach and she had addressed her by her name and rank. Just what manner of Fae creature was she dealing with here? She couldn’t be human, not with the amount of power at her fingertips, and certainly not with so many others, just as powerful as she was, in the property beyond. The magic felt like it was connected to nature somehow too, something that she hadn’t realized when they first met in Havana.
She barely caught the motion in the darkness as the woman stepped out from the cover of the trees and her suspicions seemed to be confirmed as she was bathed in moonlight. She looked different than she had in the city, her features and skin tone made her look Asian, possibly Chinese, and she was completely naked. The long magenta hair remained though, and it was hard to tell, but she thought that her eyes were the same color. The feature that seemed to dominate Luiza’s attention most though was those long, pointed ears, sweeping backward along the side of her head and poking out from her hair. Had she been using some sort of glamour while in the city?
Her abuela had told her stories of the Fae and how capricious they could be if angered or offended, but they had just been stories and Abuela had believed the Fae as lost to the world as magic now seemed to be. Luiza needed to be very careful here. It was a moment before the sudden fear that gripped her throat and had her heart beating a mile a minute loosened its hold on her enough for her to nervously reply. “I… I followed your magic here. I… umm… apologize if my presence offends, I was just looking for answers.”
The strange magenta-haired woman snorted indignantly “Yeah, well, now I’m looking for answers, and yours better be damn good.”
Earlier that day…
During the afternoon and a good portion of the evening, we worked Maddie and Nat as hard as we dared. We didn’t know how much longer we would be safe in our current position, and we would need the two of them to be able to keep up with the rest of us Naethari in the water, or at least be able to swim somewhat decently, as soon as possible. We might need to be ready to escape at a moment’s notice if our enemies found us.
Even when Maddie and Nat were resting, we couldn’t afford to give them a real break. Whenever Kieshala wasn’t watching them swim and issuing corrections and instructions like a drill sergeant, she was at least having them work on their tail and fin exercises to become accustomed to their new bodies. The only true physical rest that we could afford to give the pair was when we had them meditating and trying to find and connect to the weave of magic inside themselves. Learning to use their aetral would be just as important as learning to swim properly.
Much to my surprise, Maddie was much better at that whole meditation and introspection thing than I was. Maybe it was because she had always been comfortable in her own skin and didn’t have the same issues with her sense of self that I had always had growing up, but she managed to find the weave of her magic just before dinner. Then again, it could just be that she was stoked about learning to use her awesome shapeshifting powers. Natalie hadn’t found hers by the time my sister did, but she felt like she was on the cusp of a breakthrough.
Because of our somewhat late start that morning while waiting for Nat and Maddie to wake up, lunch and dinner were both late as well. Lunch wasn’t until late afternoon and that was when Uncle Jack brought out his laptop and shared some new intel that he had managed to acquire. He hadn’t been able to get much more useful information on Carmichael, but he was able to find out what hotel he and his people were staying at. He was also able to create sizable dossiers on many of the people working for him while he was in Cuba, including the two that I had met outside the Supermercado Palco; Corporal Luiza Morales and Private Jeremy Adams.
Dinner (and Maddie’s meditative magical breakthrough) didn’t happen until almost ten o’clock pm. I figured that I would start teaching her to shapeshift the next morning since we probably wouldn’t make much progress at it tonight. She and Nat were also exhausted from their very busy day, and by that point, I was very distracted by the amazing scents that had been coming from the kitchen all day long.
Mom and Aunt Carmen had been cooking up a storm all day long using some of the supplies that I had brought in the day before, and they were being very secretive about it. They wouldn’t let any of us Naethari into the kitchen to see what they were up to in there either. Lunch had been brought to us by the poolside since Maddie and Nat still were having trouble getting around easily in water and on land.
It was five minutes to ten when Mom and Carmen came to the pool, accompanied by Dad, and announced, “Dinner is ready.”
Dad scooped up Maddie in his arms while Aunt Carmen picked up Natalie, and the rest of us followed them out and then through the kitchen to the back door and the beach beyond it. “We thought that it would be nice to eat outside on the beach tonight,” Mom announced as she held the door open for everyone to pass through.
Storm lanterns had been set up on tables and rocks to provide light, not that we needed much since the sky was clear and the moon was nearly full. The beach furniture was all placed near the water’s edge and an outcropping of rock that would probably be more comfortable for Naethari tails than trying to have all of us sit at the tables. Those tables were laid out with a veritable feast.
Aunt Carmen had prepared a mountain of fixings for fish tacos. There was also potato salad, fresh fruit that I had gotten at the Agro Mercado, a large roast chicken and veggies, freshly baked dinner rolls, and buckets of ice that were keeping the frozen shrimp and oysters that I had gotten thawed but chilled for us Naethari. It was the very large layer cake with white, magenta, and aquamarine colored frosting that started to make me suspicious though.
“Oh wow, are we having a party to celebrate Maddie and Natalie waking up?” Jenny asked as she stared at the spread.
“In part, yes,” Kieshala answered. “I asked if now that they were awake, we could properly celebrate Naiya and Kara’s joining as well. We have not had time to do so yet, and it should be celebrated.”
After that, dinner had a celebratory atmosphere, but then we had a lot to celebrate. None of us was dead or captured, Maddie and Natalie were awake and in good condition, I had my wonderful mate, and it looked like we might both be expecting a baby next year. We all ate our fill and talked about everything and anything. It was well past midnight, and the moon was high in the sky above us when Kieshala ushered us all into the water.
This served two purposes. The first was that we Naethari all needed to stay hydrated, or we would risk becoming dehydrated and start drying out. The other reason was that Kieshala seemed to want to make the joining between Kara and me official in as close to the traditional Naethari way as she could manage while we were surrounded by friends and family.
She had me and Kara lay close together in the shallow water, with everyone else forming a circle around us, and then she began to speak formally in Naethari mind-speak, which Natalie then repeated in English for the sake of those of us who were still Human. ~ We are gathered here today, in the embrace of Mother Ocean to celebrate the joining of two members of our clan. Naiya and Kara, you are both much like siblings to me and I have watched you both grow into your new selves and embrace being Naethari. ~
~ Until I met the two of you, I had never seen two people, other than my parents, who were so obviously infatuated with one another, even if you both were not sure if you should show it at first, ~~ she continued with a smile. ~ It brought my heart great joy when I discovered that you first mated and your bond of love and trust in one another proved true, and I wish that I could find someone to share such a bond with as well. You now bear one another’s scales, and your mating bond is strong. I do not know what influence the Natrir might have on this distant world, but I feel that they are watching over us now and celebrating your union as well. Naiya Soulsinger and Kara Empath, Moonreef Clan now acknowledges your bond, may it continue to shine through the dangers ahead, to Totha, and forevermore. ~
It was as Natalie finished translating that Maddie playfully called out, “And now you may both kiss the bride!”
I was worried for a moment that Kieshala might take offense, but instead, she merely nodded, and her smile grew brighter. Maybe Natalie or Maddie had told her about the human wedding custom via mind speech. I wasn’t about to argue, and neither was Kara as she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss that would have made my toes curl if I currently had any. I eagerly reciprocated until Mom called out, “Okay, that’s enough you two! Let’s cut that cake and finish this party in style!”
Kara and I were bright red from the catcalls by that point, so we both slither-crawled to the table where the cake was set up. We sat up on our coiled tails, had the knife in our clasped hands, and were about to make the cut when both of our eyes darted toward the highway beyond the villa and the small strip of rainforest that hid it from the road. That magical presence that I had felt the day before was approaching, and then it suddenly stopped, right where I imagined the access road for our villa to be.
Kara, Jenny, and Kieshala all sensed it too; I could tell by how tense they all suddenly looked. Is that another Naethari?” Jenny asked, uncertain about what she was sensing. “It doesn’t feel near as strong as what I sense from all of you.”
Mom, Dad, Uncle Jack, and Aunt Carmen looked at Jenny in confusion before Kieshala clarified, “No, Jenny. That is a Human with a spark of magic, and they must be strong and actively using magic for us to sense them from here.”
“It feels like the woman that I encountered in Havana yesterday,” I said with a frown. A woman that we now knew for sure reported directly to Carmichael. “She’s just sitting there at the end of the access road for now.”
“Everyone, get armed and prepared to defend yourselves. One of us will go check it out in case there’s a strike team out there,” Dad ordered as he quickly took charge.
“I’ll go, Dad,” I offered. “I’m mobile and I have the best vision and other senses of those of us who could get there quickly. If there is a strike team out there, I’ll be able to send a warning through the other Naethari without using comms and maybe catch them by surprise too.”
Dad looked torn on the subject, but he seemed to realize that I was right and nodded. “Be careful, love,” Uncle Jack warned, looking just as conflicted as Dad.
“I will,” I assured them both. Then I gave Kara a quick kiss, shifted my tail into legs, and ran through the house toward the front door, grabbing an H&K 9mm USP and slapping a loaded clip inside on my way through. Fortunately, my eyes were well adapted to darkness and my sense of smell allowed me to avoid any of the areas where my Dad and Aunt Carmen had set up surprises for any unwanted guests. I quickly made my way through the trees, still not wearing a stitch in my rush to cut off any attack on the villa.
I observed her for a moment. She was alone, sitting atop a Vespa, and currently looking in the direction of the villa with a mix of confusion and fear etched into her face. I couldn’t see, smell, or sense anyone else with any of my senses. Was she scouting us out before the strike team could arrive? If she was, I would have to find out what information she had, and if she wasn’t, then I needed to find out what had brought her here, and how she had found us in the first place.
Whatever had brought her here, she had just interrupted what was essentially my wedding, so I was not a happy camper. “Corporal Luiza Morales, what an unexpected surprise,” I called out from where I hid in the shadows of a large tree, letting every bit of my annoyance make its way into my voice. “What are you doing skulking outside of our home? Answer quickly, and if I think that you’re lying, don’t like your answer, or if it otherwise pisses me off, I will kill you where you stand.”
The Corporal practically jumped out of her sneakers in surprise. My approach had been silent enough to do even Maddie proud and her eyes widened when I called her by her name and rank. Her head had snapped around toward the sound of my voice and I could see her attempting to still her trembling hands as I voiced my threat.
I slipped out of the shadows, unbothered by my nakedness, I was used to people seeing me this way by now, or topless at the very least. She didn’t seem to have a weapon on her and if she really was a threat I could either shoot her or close the distance and kill her before she even realized what I was doing. I leaned slightly against the tree to conceal the gun in my right hand as for what seemed a long awkward eternity she stared at my naked form. Oddly though, her attention seemed most drawn to my hair, and my ears.
She saw me as a possible threat; I could see the fear and uncertainty in her eyes. Her pulse was elevated, and she was trembling as she finally stammered, “I… I followed your magic here. I… umm… apologize if my presence offends, I was just looking for answers.”
I tried not to show my surprise as I let slip a vexed snort. We just got caught with our pants down because I didn’t account for her having magical abilities of her own. I kept my senses trained on her, watching her eye movement, listening to the beat of her heart, and breathing in her scent. I wasn’t quite a lie detector, Kara’s empathy made her far better at that sort of thing when combined with her other senses, but I thought that I could probably read her pretty well like this.
I was careful not to let any emotion into my voice as I countered, “Yeah, well, now I’m looking for answers, and yours better be damn good.” If I even suspected that this woman was a danger to the people I love, then I would carry out my threat and kill her where she stood.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
Approaching the woman before me and allowing her to see that I was armed; I motioned for her to be quiet and then quickly patted her down and searched the Vespa for any obvious communication devices, trackers, or weapons. We could do a more thorough search at the house, but I wanted to search for anything obvious before deciding on how to deal with her. The only things that she had on her were a California ID card, some cash, and a backpack containing a couple of bottles of water, some thread, and a few other odds and ends inside.
She was holding a needle on a thread, and the needle was floating in the air and pointing directly at me for some reason. I assumed that the latter was how she had tracked me. She didn’t even have a phone on her. “Travelling light,” I muttered.
To my surprise, she nodded. “This was personal, and I didn’t want anyone following or tracking me.”
Hopefully, that was the truth, and she was as thorough as it looked like she was. I figured that I could probably start questioning her though, so I decided to start with the question that was weighing most on my mind. “Did Carmichael send you to find us, Corporal Morales?”
”What? No! Why would the General have sent me? As I said, I was following your magic, I don’t know what it’s like wherever you Fae come from, but magic is fading from our world, has been for a long time, and is almost gone entirely. I have never sensed anyone else with magic since my abuela died, and certainly not anyone as powerful as you seem to be. General Carmichael probably doesn’t even believe in magic, the Fae, or anything like that… and if he did, he’d probably be searching for every way possible to weaponize them,” The last bit was quietly and bitterly muttered under her breath, but my acute hearing easily picked up the muttered words.
From her reactions and what my senses were telling me, she didn’t seem to be lying and there was a lot to unpack from that one answer. First, she seemed to think I was some sort of fairy creature, but I guess that wasn’t all that surprising given the magic and that my pointy ears weren’t shifted. I might have jumped to that conclusion as well.
Secondly, this woman, who was Camichael's aide according to Uncle Jack’s intel, seemed to have no idea what he was looking for here in Cuba. I could understand the compartmentalization of information, but he was making his job that much harder if he wasn’t giving the people working under him at least some idea of what to look for. Of course, it could just be Corporal Morales who was being kept in the dark. Uncle Jack’s intel seemed to indicate that she was the only female under his command that he had brought to Cuba, and he did have a reputation as a misogynist.
She also didn’t like her commanding officer, or maybe it was a distaste for the military in general. She had tried to keep her face impassive and her tone neutral when speaking about Carmichael but her scent, the slight increase in her heart rate, and the narrowing of her eyes indicated negative feelings there. There was also the barely audible side comment to consider.
The last bit of information was that she was an experienced magic-user, a fact that she was wisely keeping from her commanding officer. She had to have at least some formal teaching to be competent enough to track me down by my magic, perhaps that abuela who she mentioned? How had she tracked me down anyway? Were we Naethari that much more powerful than her, even with the often limited scope of our abilities, or was she sensing the primal growth energy that we Naethari radiated?
If she truly wanted answers, presumably regarding something of a magical nature, then maybe I was looking at a potential ally here. Either way, I couldn’t let her go back to her boss now that she had found our hideout and seen me like this, and I would rather not have to kill someone who was caught up in all of this with no idea of what was really happening. I decided to throw her a bone while giving her a chance to show her true colors.
“I’m not Fae, I don’t even know if they exist or not. I’m something else entirely, something that General Carmichael wants very badly. Badly enough that he is going after the people I care about to get his hands on me and the others like me,” I said as I shifted my features to a form that I knew she would find familiar. Carmichael doesn’t even know about our magical abilities; he likely thinks us mere beasts and underestimates us. We wish to live in peace, and he wants to weaponize us.”
For a long moment, she stood there frozen, as if her mind was trying to process what she had just seen. When her voice finally returned with a squeak, her reply was more of a question. “Danica Holmes?”
“Not really,” I replied with a shrug before shifting back to Naiya with legs, “she doesn’t exist outside of the fake documents and online presence that we created for her. One of my personal forms of magic allows me to change my form and this was just the form that I decided to use when I showed up for Carmichael’s trap. I could have impersonated an already established person if I chose, of course, but we didn’t want to drag potentially innocent people into this.”
Confusion gave way to realization on her face, and then horror. “Such an ability could be misused in so many ways.” And I didn’t even tell her about the mind control thing. That wasn’t something that I wansted to mention in a tense first meeting like this, especially since I might need to use it if she proved uncooperative.
“Which is why Carmichael can never find out about it, and it is just one ability of many among our kind,” I told her flatly. There it was. The bait. Now to give her the choice and see if she’d try to run back to Carmichael with this information in hand or follow me and find whatever answers that she sought with us and become a potential ally. If she tried to start the Vespa, she would try to run, and I would have to kill her. “If you want to get your answers, and find out what’s truly going on here, grab that bike and follow me on foot.”
She either realized that I was testing her, or she was willing to cooperate and face a walk down a potentially long access road. She began to push the Vespa along behind me as I stepped onto the road and walked along it, back toward the villa. I wasn’t too worried about her trying to attack me from behind since I would hear her, and she would have to stop pushing the Vespa to do so. She was unarmed, and my reflexes and physical abilities would put a stop to such an attempt. Besides, now that we were on the access road, Uncle Jack probably had his eyes on us, which was why I was in front.
The entire access road was monitored by trail cameras with motion detectors and Uncle Jack would be ready to monitor the cams as soon as one of them detected movement. The reason that we hadn’t been alerted to Corporal Morales’s presence by more mundane means was that she was on a major road when I approached her. Having motion sensors pointed there would only be an annoyance since they would be going off constantly.
In addition to the surveillance along the access road, land mines, and other traps throughout the trees surrounding the villa, we also had some other surprises for uninvited guests. If Uncle Jack thought that we were being assaulted, he would hit the remote detonators for the very nasty bombs that he, Aunt Carmen, and my dad had set up. The bombs were attached to trees near the roadside, starting at the midway point of the access road. If someone was stupid enough to bring personnel or vehicles along this road to attack us, they would soon be dodging shrapnel in the form of small bits of metal, and falling trees too.
Thankfully, Uncle Jack didn’t see any reason to hit the remote for that particular trap at the moment, because I made sure to give the other Naethari a status report through mind-speech as soon as we started making our way toward the house. We walked in silence and were in sight of the villa when the woman behind me asked, “Why are you offering to answer my questions? Are you going to kill me?”
I frowned at the final question. Her heart rate and breathing had hardly shifted at all, and her tone was almost blasé as she mentioned the possibility of her death. Were her answers more important to her than her life, or was she looking at her possible death as an escape from something else?
“We would rather not kill anybody who doesn’t deserve to die or who isn’t trying to kill or cage us, but we also can’t afford to let you leave here until we can be sure that you won’t go straight to Carmichael,” I told her honestly. “I don’t know what answers you seek, but if you’re going to be our guest for a while then the least we can do is try to make up for the inconvenience. To be honest, I would rather have you as an ally, if possible. You have knowledge about our enemy and if you truly found me by using magic, then that shows that you’re gifted with it and resourceful as well.”
“So, that’s why you are letting me see you like this?” she inquired.
“Honestly, you caught us at a bad time, and I was more concerned with giving myself legs and getting armed before you either fled with potential information on our whereabouts or drove into the meat grinder along this road before I could question you,” I told her candidly.
“I’m sorry, did my presence wake you? Is that why you aren’t dressed? Wait… giving yourself legs?” Her tone made her seem genuinely remorseful for her unexpected presence, but her breath caught when she realized what I had said.
“No, we were celebrating. My mate and I were about to cut our wedding cake, and clothes aren’t really practical for my kind a lot of the time,” I explained. “You’ll find out soon, you might as well join us for some cake, and then we’ll want to ask you some questions before answering yours.”
Mom, Dad, and Aunt Carmen were all armed and waiting for us at the front door. Uncle Jack had his bug sweeper kit as well and ran it over both our guest and the Vespa while the others watched intently. Corporal Morales recognized every single one of them; I could see it in her eyes, but to her credit, she seemed more curious than anything. Uncle Jack was able to give her and her belongings the all-clear, even the rented Vespa didn’t have a GPS, but it was a fairly old model, like many vehicles in Cuba.
With that unpleasant task out of the way, we decided to wait to grill her about her knowledge of her boss and his activities until we were all more comfortable on the beach, preferably with cake once Kara and I could cut it. We even left our weapons in the house since she was unarmed, and it would make her feel like less of a hostage. I also asked if she would be more comfortable if we addressed her by her first name instead of her rank, which she seemed to appreciate.
We all knew that we couldn’t let her go until our safety was assured, but there was no reason to make the experience any more uncomfortable than it needed to be unless she tried to make a break for it. For now, we were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in that regard. If she did try to escape us, she was going to have to get through me and the other Naethari first anyway, and I wouldn’t take any bets on her making it out alive.
We led her through the house and back to the beach, where Luiza stopped to gape at the five Naethari who were watching her with varying degrees of concern, curiosity, and suspicion. “Madre de Dios, mermaids!” she gasped.
Kieshala rankled at that, and I put a hand gently on the Corporal’s shoulder. “We find that name offensive, Luiza, it’s a label created by humans. We’re Naethari.” Then I walked past her toward Kara, making sure to shift back to my natural form while she was still staring at us, before kissing my mate lovingly.
It was several moments before the poor woman could articulate words again, but she immediately apologized when she could. “Sorry, I’ll… umm… try to call you Naethari from now on.” Then she took a deep breath and tried to be a little less obvious about staring at us before adding, “Fuck, I have so many more questions now.”
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
All conversations of a serious nature should be had with cake; it just makes things much more pleasant and civilized. I mean, who doesn’t like cake? Once proper introductions were made, and Kara and I cut our cake and smooshed some in each other’s faces, we got down to the serious business of questioning Corporal Luiza Morales.
She seemed understandably reluctant to share any information at first. Well, we were technically holding her hostage and she had been trained to not give any information to enemies if captured. It seemed to be more her training and ingrained military habits than any loyalty toward Carmichael that stayed her tongue at first. She really didn’t like her commanding officer, but she also seemed to be someone who took her oaths seriously and was reluctant to break one.
I was willing to bet that there was more to it than just disliking Carmichael that had her even considering answering our questions, I mean, that probably wasn’t all that uncommon. I didn’t think that it was just that we would be willing to answer her magic-related questions either. It was my mate who figured it out, or at least got a general idea of what might be causing her wavering loyalties, while my parents eased into the questioning by getting some background information that we could confirm from our file on Luiza.
~ She keeps a calm exterior, but underneath that, her emotions are all over the place, ~ she said mentally to the Naethari among us. ~ Loyalty, determination, curiosity, guilt, but the strongest emotions are hate, self-loathing, and a festering sense of raw suffering that is deeply entangled with most of her other emotions. It hurts just to see it. She actually reminds me of Naiya after Hart… ~
She stopped herself from saying any more, not wanting to bring me unwelcome memories, and I appreciated that. I was trying to put my torture at Hart’s hands behind me, I had gotten some measure of closure, and the love and support that I got from my family helped too, but sometimes the memories still paralyzed me, or I would wake up screaming. Even now, I had to take a deep breath and tell myself that I was past this, that I wasn’t a victim anymore.
PTSD isn’t something you just get over. It gets easier with time, but it can still haunt your memories for your entire life, sometimes coming out of nowhere. Honestly though, that’s a best-case scenario, where a person actually has a good support system and can talk with others about their trauma to put it in perspective and get past the worst of it. Then there are cases where a person can’t talk about it, or is forced to remain silent, and the trauma festers inside. Eventually, if it goes on long enough, those people want to see the world burn.
~ Some sort of PTSD maybe? Her records do say that she’s seen combat, ~ I suggested.
~ Whatever it is, all those negative emotions just spiked massively when your mother asked who her commanding officer was before Carmichael. It may not show on her face, but whoever this ‘Brigadier General Karl Thompson’ is, she hates him enough to kill him if given the chance. There is a lot of hatred, shame, and self-loathing tied up with that name, ~ Kara replied, watching the corporal in concern.
~ My bet is on a dirty secret that the military swept under the rug to save face, ~ Maddie contributed darkly as she looked through Corporal Morales’s file. ~ It wouldn’t be the first time, and her file says that she was promoted and transferred to Carmichael just over a year ago when Thompson took early retirement. That whole situation is too convenient; it doesn’t pass the smell test. ~
Other than confirming information that we already had, she wasn’t telling us much. Mom apparently had similar suspicions as Maddie though as she stated, “Something about your promotion and transfer when your former CO took early retirement stinks.” When Luiza’s breath caught and a brief look of panic broke her impassive expression, Mom raised her hands to placate her. “I’m not going to ask you what happened, it’s not pertinent to what we want to know, but I get the feeling that it’s making it very hard for you to stay in the military. If you’re looking for a way out, then we can help provide that, if you’re willing to work with us.”
Luiza laughed, but there was no humor in it. “No offense, but I don’t see how you’re going to help me get out of my situation when the General is turning half of Cuba upside down looking for all of you.”
“And how has that been working out for him so far, Love? We’re still in the wind and we know how to cover our tracks and keep a low profile, even without Naiya’s abilities,” Uncle Jack pointed out. “He has to get lucky or hope that we make a mistake to find us, while we know exactly where he is and how to avoid being sighted again.”
“Clara has a point, mi amor,” Aunt Carmen pointed out. “Maybe we should be treating this as a possible recruitment instead of as a hostage interrogation.”
Dad took a thoughtful bite of his cake but nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you ask your questions, Luiza? We can get any information that we want once we’ve convinced you that we’re not whatever monsters that General Carmichael may be painting us as.”
Of course, Luiza’s first questions were the big ones regarding magic. “Why is magic fading? Is it related to nature, as my abuela thought?”
Kieshala decided to field those questions. “Mana is created by the primal magic of a world, which is tied to nature, as this abeula of yours believed. Humans as a species do not care for nature; they poison the water, the land, and the air with no thought to the damage they do. They are killing this world, and it is too late to save it now. Only the most remote areas on this world, untouched by man, produce any mana now, and even those weaken as this world dies. Even those like you, with a great talent for magic, are limited by how sparse the mana is on this world outside of those remote areas. There is hardly enough here for me to produce very simple spells, and that is only because so many Naethari are together here.”
“Is there any way to fix it? I don’t want to lose my magic and it seems to get weaker every day. I don’t even think the tracking spell I used to find you would have worked if it wasn’t such a basic spell and all of you weren’t so damn powerful. Why are you mer… Naethari so powerful anyway, if there is so little mana around?”
A sad shake of Kieshala’s head was her response to the first question. “If we Naethari had counterparts on this world, they are long gone. Even all of the clans of Naethari of Totha together would have difficulty countering the damage done to this world, and it would be a fruitless effort so long as Humans continue to poison it.”
“As for why we seem so powerful, “Kara put in, “when we first became Naethari, Kieshala explained that we are bound to the primal magic of the sea. That our kind was created for that purpose. We radiate primal growth energy, which in turn fosters life and creates mana. Most of the energy that we generate from eating is converted into that energy, a much smaller portion gives us the energy to swim and go about our daily activities, and the rest powers our unique magical gifts, which are called aetral.”
“The power that you’re sensing is probably that primal energy,” I added. “Only Spellweavers, like Kieshala, actually need to draw on mana to use their abilities, but they are a lot more powerful and versatile than the rest of us, from what she has said. I mean, they can create portals between worlds with access to enough mana. It’s how she got to Earth from Totha in the first place.”
Luiza’s eyes went wider and wider as she took in our explanation. ‘Wait, she’s actually from another world? And what did Kara mean when she said, ‘when we first became Naethari’?”
“Yeah, she came here from another world, where the Naethari come from. She’s the only one of us who was born Naethari too, the rest of us were born as human as you are. I actually had to turn Maddie into one of us when one of Carmichael’s strike teams almost killed her.”
“So, I have a score to settle with that bastard. If I can do that and test out my new toy at the same time, all the better,” my sister contributed with a grimace.
We told Luiza the whole story about how Pierce had captured Kieshala, her treatment at his hands, and how we had all been drawn or dragged in. We didn’t leave anything out, not even the torture that Kieshala and I had both suffered. Then we finished with our escape and how we had lured Pierce to Cuba to kill him.
Luiza waited until we finished before saying, “This Dr. Alan Harris that you mentioned; General Carmichael had a meeting with someone with that name not long before we came to Cuba. It’s no wonder he’s been playing this so close to the vest and focusing the search on mercenaries. He hasn’t shared much with any of us under his command, so we all thought that you stole some experimental top-secret weapon from R&D or something. If he started talking about ‘mermaids’ he would have been up for a psychiatric review.”
“Well, that explains why Harris vanished suddenly,” Uncle Jack muttered. “He must have had enough information saved on a personal device to convince Carmichael of your existence, and possible use as trained living weapons.”
“Only, he never knew just how smart Naethari really are since I altered my reports and the information that I was giving them since I found out what was really going on.,” Nat pointed out.
“Thank goodness for that,” Mom said with a sigh. “Right now, Carmichael believes that you’re smart enough to be trained, but not sentient. He also knows about your general physical abilities, the neurotoxin that your barbed spines excrete, and that you heal extremely quickly. If he knew the full scope of Naiya’s and Jenny’s abilities, he would never stop searching for them.”
I now deeply regretted not having the opportunity to kill Harris. Something that I made abundantly clear as I grumbled, “If Carmichael has Harris, you can bet that he also has access to the only sedative that’s somewhat effective on us, and that he has a rough idea of how to create more of us, if he can manage to capture one of us. Now that Maddie and Nat are recovering, we need to decide how to take care of this, once and for all.”
Maddie seemed to agree as she suggested, “Carmichael probably thinks I’m dead, or at least out of the game, with that gut shot I took. If Naiya can help me become a passable shifter, it frees me up for other things should we set a trap for him, but he likely won’t move on it unless he thinks all of the major players are in place.”
He either thinks Nat is dead or just doesn’t see her as important,” I added, “Probably dead if he’s going off information from Harris. Luiza and her subordinate weren’t showing any pictures of her around, only the five of you known mercenaries and me as Danica Holmes.”
Luiza watched our discussion thoughtfully and took a deep breath. “He thinks that Madeline MacArthur is likely dead after the botched attempt to capture her, but he wants to cover all of his bases. I’ve heard him complaining about it, but he’s had some of us searching hospitals for her or showing photos around, just in case.”
We all turned to look at her as she freely offered the information so soon after letting us know about the Harris connection. “I take it that you’re accepting our offer, then?” Mom asked.
“I’ll tell you what I can, and try to help you, but I don’t really know much that you don’t know already. As I said, the general is playing this close to the vest. Could you maybe elaborate on how you’re going to help me get out of this mess since I’m about to turn traitor and all?”
“You could become a Naethari,” Jenny suggested with an imploring glance toward Kieshala.
Kieshala smiled at my young sister-in-law and nodded. “The others here plan on becoming Naethari and joining us once we are able to return to Totha. I would be willing to offer the same to you since you are willing to help us.”
Luiza’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at the offer. “I… would I have magic still?”
“Well, you’d have the same basic abilities as the rest of us, and whatever your aetral turned out to be, so you would definitely have some type of magical ability,” Kara pointed out. “Kieshala, you said that our Naethari forms and aetral are reflections of our souls. How likely is it that she could get something similar to the magic she already knows how to use?”
“Her magic is obviously a part of herself that she values highly and does not wish to lose,” Kieshala murmured, as she looked Luiza over with a pensive expression. It is very likely that her aetral would be something similar, perhaps a Spellweaver like me. She would be as limited as I am here, with no mana to work with, but once in Totha she would have access to vast amounts of mana.”
“I’m in,” Luiza stated without a hint of hesitation. Then she started spilling everything that she knew about Carmichael and his operation in Cuba to find us. While she couldn’t tell us much about the tactics he might employ and hadn’t been told much about their mission in general, she was able to give us rough estimates on the number of men and resources that he currently had available to him.
It was enough to come up with a few possible plans, though we would need time before we could act on some of them. Maddie would need some training in using her shifting ability, so we put off the endgame until I could teach her to have legs again for a little while and how to change her appearance. At least we now knew that Carmichael’s people didn’t have my Jessica Danvers identity down as a person of interest, so I would still be free to go into the city for supplies for a while longer when needed.
We did enact phase one of our plan though, a fun little idea that was sure to piss Carmichael off, and hopefully plant the seeds of paranoia for later. We were going back to an old classic for this, with a bit of a twist, and Luiza thought that it would do the job nicely. We were up until almost dawn getting things ready, but it was worth it. I almost wished that I could be there to see the look on Carmichael’s face.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
Warren Carmichael frowned as he sipped at his morning cup of Joe. He had to have it sent up via room service with his breakfast and the coffee was not as good as he had become accustomed to since his arrival in Cuba. Usually, he would have Corporal Morales pick it up from a café a few blocks away, at least then the woman would be making herself useful.
He didn’t like having women under his command, and this one he had to be especially careful of, given her history. Brigadier General Karl Thompson was a credit to the military before that little slut had accused her former commander of rape, and he didn’t want to follow in Karl’s footsteps. It had all been hushed up, of course. Karl was offered early retirement to avoid a court martial and the little slut had been given a promotion, a transfer, and some threats to keep her quiet.
It galled him that a good officer had been ousted from the army while that bitch was given exactly what she was probably after in the first place. This was why he didn’t believe that women belong in the military. They weren’t tough enough to do the job, they were a constant temptation, and when things get too tough, they cried rape, sexual harassment, or some such.
At least having her make coffee runs and interviewing tourists and locals for any signs of those mercs had made her somewhat useful. Still, he always made sure that she was being watched by one of his men until the one watching her last night lost her in a crowd of tourists. The night before he had the same man, Sergeant Whitmore, following her and he claimed that she had just wandered the tourist traps and beaches aimlessly. Whitmore had assumed that last night would be the same, but then he lost her, and she didn’t return to the hotel.
He knew that he should have kept a tracking device on the bitch. Was she planning something? Or was she just entertaining some local men? At least he could write her up for dereliction of duty, he had been waiting a while to have something on her. Still, he wondered where she was and what trouble she was getting into without someone to keep an eye on her.
He got an answer as he was checking his email, though it did not seem related at first. Then he saw the name of the sender, Danica Holmes, a name that made him burn with rage. The subject line said simply, ‘Remember me?’ It was enough that his free hand was shaking with fury as he used the other to select the message and open it.
There was no text except for a colon and a P made in the irksome shape of someone sticking out their tongue and there was a video file that he immediately opened. He was too angry to think of running it through a virus scanner, a mistake that he would later come to regret. None of that was important at the moment though, right now all that he could think about was that girl as he opened the video file.
And then, there she was, right there on his screen, smiling at him. “Hi, Warren. Do you mind if I call you Warren? We didn’t really get to meet in person when I escaped that little trap of yours. You know me as Danica Holmes, though you’ve probably figured out by now that it’s not my real name. My name is unimportant; I have so many of them after all. Anyway, this isn’t a social call; I have something that I think belongs to you.”
The camera panned outward briefly to show that Holmes was wearing a loose white dress and standing beside a chair, which held a bound, gagged, and terrified-looking Corporal Luiza Morales. “That bitch!” the general snarled, though which woman it was directed at was debatable. It definitely would have applied to both the girl who was now taunting him and the incompetent woman who had allowed herself to be captured.
Holmes walked away from Morales to sit in another chair to the right, and then the camera focused once more on her, taking Morales out of the picture. Holmes looked at the camera again and her expression was now far colder and more menacing than he would have previously given the lush at Frost’s party credit for. “You killed someone important to me. An eye for an eye, Warren.” Then she pulled a gun from a table beside the chair, aimed it to the left, and pulled the trigger.
“There, now we’re even, Warren,” Holmes said, her voice taunting him as she spoke his name, though her expression was still that of a cold-blooded killer. “Now, onto other business. You have been warned to back the fuck off and leave my friends and the beings that they are protecting alone. I warned you the night that your men killed Madeline MacArthur, but you can’t seem to take the hint. This is your last warning, back off and leave Cuba or you will die at our hands.”
“This girl playing mercenary has the nerve to threaten me?!” The thought galvanized him. He would have what he came for, and that bitch would give him the answers herself. He would get them out of her between screams of pain and begging for mercy if he had to. He was dealing with real soldiers and fighting wars when she was still a gleam in her daddy’s eye.
“Just in case you’re stupid enough to keep coming after us, I think it’s only fair to let you know exactly what you’re dealing with. Those ‘mermaids’ that you’re after, they’re small potatoes.” Even as she spoke the words, Holmes’s features began to shift until he was looking at the mystery girl who had killed the strike team sent in to retrieve Madeline MacArthur. “You recognize me, right? I’ve escaped you twice now and killed seven of your men. It’s actually a little insulting that you’re going after mermaids when I’m the real prize here, Warren. I took out your black ops team as if they were a bunch of mall cops, and I’ll do the same to anyone else that you send after us.”
Then her face and body shifted again, briefly changing to look like Private Adams, then she was an exact duplicate of Corporal Morales and she smiled coldly at him with his subordinate’s face. “I can be anyone, go anywhere, and you will never know who I am until I strike, and you’re dead. Remember how I deal with people who cross me, Warren.” The camera moved to her left to show Corporal Morales slumped in the chair, the side of her head a red mess and a look of horror etched onto her face and empty eyes.
Warren stared at the screen, filled with impotent rage at this girl who had now bested him three times. He suddenly wanted something a lot stronger than coffee as the camera swung back toward Morales’s doppelganger, still with that cold smile on her face. Whatever she was, she wasn’t human, and he had to consciously ignore the chill that ran down his spine and that brief spike of terror as he focused instead on how valuable she would be. He still intended to capture the mermaids of course; they would be useful in their own way, but the potential of this inhuman girl was something that every military organization on the planet would love to have for black ops. In the meantime, he would have to take security measures against her to make sure she wasn’t impersonating anyone close to him.
The girl shifted back to the face and body she had worn when taking down his strike team to say, “Goodbye, Warren, make the right choice here and back off.” Was that maybe her true form? Was there a time limit on how long she could hold other forms? She had spent the whole evening on Frost’s yacht as Danica and he had been watching her for most of that time. And when he had his people look into her, she didn’t exist beyond her social media presence.
Those thoughts were interrupted as she added, “Oh, and before I forget, did you check this file for viruses? Good on you if you did. If you didn’t, well, that little worm has been doing its job since you opened this file, so thanks for all the information.”
Warren yelled in fury and quickly closed the file.
I slept in until after lunch, but then we did have a bit of a busy night. All of the other Naethari were still asleep, so I quickly shifted to give myself legs, donned the dress that I had worn last night for the show, and went off in search of breakfast. On the way, I checked Maddie’s former room and was pleased to find Luiza inside and sleeping. Not that I thought that she would go back to her boss now that we had ‘killed’ her. It was the out she had been looking for to escape the military after all, and she seemed to be looking forward to the possibility of having stronger magical abilities as a Naethari.
Mom and Aunt Carmen were in the kitchen working on breakfast with several large stacks of pancakes showing that they had been up and at it for a while now. The pancakes and the big pot of oatmeal would hopefully be enough to feed all of us, but I figured that I should go out to the lagoon and collect some fresh seafood as well. By the time that I returned with a pair of large buckets filled with cod and shrimp, the others had joined the waking world and Luiza, Uncle Jack, and Dad were at the breakfast table with Mom and Aunt Carmen.
Since Nat and Maddie were still getting used to moving around with their tails, we brought breakfast to them and the others in the pool. Dad and Uncle Jack helped me to bring the food to the pool and the latter commented as we ate, “It looks like Carmichael opened our video this morning. The worm copied all of the files on his personal laptop and sent them to my cloud. There isn’t a lot there pertinent to us, other than video clips and other files that he probably got from Harris. Nothing surprising there.”
I smiled as I imagined Carmichael’s face turning various shades of red as he watched that video. “They can’t use that to track us, can they?” Nat asked.
“No, I took the usual precautions. If they try to follow the trail doggedly enough to trace any recent connections to the cloud or Danica’s fake email, it’ll lead them to an ISP in Germany. It should keep them busy for a while. I’m still more concerned with you showing off your abilities as you did, Naiya,” he replied, turning to me as he said the last.
“At least I didn’t change into any animals,” I offered with a shrug between bites of breakfast. I didn’t like changing into a male form, even as briefly as I did, but it was needed to make Carmichael think that I could be anyone. “This was the best plan we had. This is going to have him looking over his shoulder and concentrating on security though. Between that and looking for us Naethari, and whatever he thinks I might be, he will have his local resources spread thin. This should hopefully keep the heat off us until Maddie and Nat have some time to get used to their new bodies and aetral, and then we can move on to phase two.”
There were a lot of things about this plan that none of us really liked, so I could understand where he was coming from. Kieshala hadn’t been happy about using what little mana she had been able to gather so far to provide the brief illusion to make Luiza’s ‘death’ convincing either. Sacrifices needed to be made until we were ready for phase two.
Casually showing off my abilities was going to make Carmichael cautious, and hopefully paranoid. I had been pushing his buttons throughout the video too and I was hoping that I had goaded him enough that he wouldn’t be thinking clearly where I was involved anymore. We had shown him that both girls who had foiled his plans were the same person, hopefully spread some misinformation as well, and if he thought both Maddie and Luiza were dead then he would underestimate our numbers.
The purpose of the video had been to bait Carmichael, put him off balance, have him jumping at shadows, and divide his attention. I thought that it would serve its purpose well, and we even gave him another chance to back off, not that any of us thought he would. All the information that we had on him, now expanded by Luiza’s personal experience, said that he would take the bait.
He was too determined to get what he wanted, and I had just given him another juicy target to sink his teeth into. He was probably furious with me too, so even if he wasn’t determined to get what he was after, that would put me in his crosshairs. That suited us just fine though, it would make it that much easier to lure him into a trap. He had killed Sandro, almost killed Maddie, and had been hunting us down since he arrived in Cuba. He had made it personal, and he was going to pay for fucking with us, just as Hart and Pierce had before him.
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.
For the next week and a half, Luiza got settled in as we got to know her better and let her get to know us as well. She also told us as much as she could about General Carmichael and how he usually operated. After my little message, he probably changed some things and tightened security, but he was also a man who was set in his ways and accustomed to his usual methods and tenacity working out for him.
Luiza had been suffering silently and waiting out her remaining time in the military when her search for answers about magic brought her to us. She kept quiet about exactly why she wanted out of the service, but we didn't push her on what was essentially a personal matter. The emotions that Kara sensed from her when it was brought up, and the sudden promotion and reassignment in her file, indicated that it was something bad and we hoped that she would open up to one of us about how she was suffering once she knew and trusted us a bit more.
One topic that she was eager to talk about was magic and the different ways that it could be used, especially after seeing the illusion that Kieshala had cast on the video that we sent to her former commanding officer. Whenever Kieshala had time, Luiza would talk with her about her aetral and what she was able to do with it. She very obviously had a passion for the topic and was dearly hoping that she would end up as a Spellweaver as well once we turned her and she became one of us. It wasn't just magic that they talked about though, and it was nice to see Kieshala welcoming the former soldier into our ranks.
Still, most of her waking hours (and Kara's Jenny's, and mine as well) were dedicated to training Nat and Maddie to use their new bodies, working them hard to become faster and more agile in the water, and Kieshala and I instructing them in the use of their respective aetral. Their swimming improved by the day and both of them were making good progress on using their aetral as well. Natalie could now control small pools of water reliably for short periods, but she wanted to work more on her fine control and staying power.
As for Maddie, she took well to shifting and was working on both partial and full shifts. She could now hold a human form that looked very different from her base form for roughly fifteen minutes before reverting. It wasn't enough to join me for my brief forays into Havana for supplies and intel, but it would allow her enough time to move around the house a bit when she needed to.
Speaking of my trips into the city, I had to make a few of them to augment our food and supplies. I also made a few to do some surveillance of Carmichael and his known local operatives. The longer he went without any information on us, the more that paranoia seemed to settle upon him, and he had instituted several security measures around himself such as scheduled check-ins for those that he had direct contact with, passphrases, and portable fingerprint and retinal scanners.
It probably didn't help that I had sent him a few more messages in that time, veiled death threats and comments that were meant to get into his head and make him think that I was much closer than I really was. My Soulsinger ability was also useful with this, though I had to be careful where and when I used it. I had also made several false tips to his canvassers that had his people racing all over town and generally wasting their time. Today was going to be a very full day for me though.
Warren had two very particular vices that made him an easy target. The first was Cuban cigars, but Luiza told me that he already had a couple of boxes of those hidden away. The other was a good cup of coffee, and he had made Luiza make a coffee run by foot every morning so he could have one with his breakfast to start the day off right. He had been smart enough to change the location that he got it from since we captured and ‘killed’ Luiza, but he still had one of his minions going on a coffee run for him every morning.
I had gotten up very early and stolen a car to be waiting and watching the hotel from a distance when Private Malcolm Graves left for that onerous task before it was even light outside. Since Uncle Jack could access the local traffic cameras as well as our pursuers could, I already knew where the new coffeehouse of choice was and what route he would take to get there. Once I was certain that Carmichael didn’t have anyone tailing his gopher, I made my way toward the coffee shop to intercept Private Graves.
It was quiet at this time of morning, and the darkness would help with my task. I waited for my prey around the corner of an alleyway roughly a block away from the coffee shop, well out of the sight of any cameras, and only when both my sonar sense and my sense of smell said he was closing in did I start to sing Come to Me by the Goo Goo Dolls. He was tired and bored and I could feel his resistance crumble nearly immediately. I beckoned to him flirtatiously as I continued to sing and strengthen my grip on his mind, and he followed me further into the alley with a blank look on his face.
Before I even finished the song, his mind was pliable to my wishes. ~ Private Graves, you will go to the coffee shop as planned to get your commanding officer’s morning coffee. Before leaving, you will add this and then discard the vial. Then you will forget doing so and act normally when you take the coffee to General Carmichael. When the General dismisses you, instead of following his orders you will return to this alley, climb into the dumpster behind me, and fall into a restful sleep. When you wake, you will not remember me, this meeting, or anything after leaving the hotel to get the coffee, ~ I told him once our minds were linked and handing him a vial filled with a slightly oily liquid.
I felt my geas take hold and the young soldier left the alley to continue his walk to the coffee shop as if nothing had happened. Once he was well away, I changed form from a pretty young local girl to a more androgynous teen and returned to the stolen car to make my way back to the cheap motel where I had stashed my things to change. I quickly changed clothes there but didn’t change into my Jessica Danvers persona quite yet. I waited until I was well away and back inside my car at a parking lot.
With my morning mischief meticulously managed, I went shopping for food and supplies for our upcoming trip. I had quite a lot to buy, and I was eager to get home once I was done. There was a lot to do this afternoon after all; emails to send, plans to finalize, and so many preparations to make.
The first trip went well, and I left Havana with a car packed full of the supplies that we would need. Once the car was unloaded, I helped the others with the preparations for phase two of our plan for dealing with Carmichael. With Maddie and Nat able to move a lot faster and more naturally in the water, and somewhat proficient in the basics of using their aetral, we were about ready to make our move.
I also sent another email to General Carmichael to mess with him again. Between my constant taunts and occasionally sending his people all over Havana with false information over the past week and a half, he was probably getting very frustrated with me by now. It was fun screwing with him, and it had been working so far in keeping him off balance.
It was late afternoon, and once again I was back in Havana for one more trip to the Supermercado Palco, which I had tried to avoid on my earlier trip into the city by going to one of the smaller supermercados. There was one thing in particular that I wanted on this shopping excursion, and I knew that I would most likely be able to get what I wanted there. This time, I was wearing the form of a buxom redhead and was stopped by the familiar Private Jeremy Adams as I approached the store from the parking lot. “Umm… excuse me, Miss? Do you speak English?”
I hadn’t expected Carmichael’s minions to canvass me until I left the store, but I shrugged it off. As tempting as it was for me to say something in Chinese, just to see the look of confusion on his face that it would likely cause, I decided not to toy with him any more than I had to. “Yeah, sure do,” I replied with a cheerful smile.
“Oh, good. I’m… uhh… looking for some friends that went missing recently,” he said uncertainly as he stared at my large chest, which was proudly displayed by the low plunging neckline of my very tight white blouse. “Could you tell me if you’ve seen any of these people recently?”
I barely glanced at the photos before pointing to the ones of my Dad and Aunt Carmen with a nod. “I think I saw those two earlier today actually. They were moving some stuff onto a boat,” I told him completely honestly before suggesting, “Maybe try looking near the waterfront?”
Adams’s eyes widened momentarily and he gave me a good once over with his eyes, again hovering briefly on my chest before nodding. “Umm… thanks, I’ll do that.” Then he took off toward the parking lot as quickly as he could.
I promptly headed into the store and got my shopping done as quickly as possible. It was mostly the basics that I hadn’t been able to get elsewhere, though I did get some chocolate, which I sat in the car to eat before heading back toward home. I had been having the worst craving for chocolate for some reason, but at least it was sated for now. It wasn’t long after I left the store that I realized that I was being followed.
One car with two men inside, one of whom I figured was probably Private Adams. Whoever was driving, they weren’t very good at tailing someone. “Huh, let’s see how these good they are when I give them something to really chase. I’ve been wanting to open this baby up since I bought it from Sandro.”
I punched the gas and deftly switched gears, leading them on a merry chase through much of the city before losing them by performing a high-speed U-turn. Naethari reflexes for the win. They weren’t near as adventurous in the driver’s seat as I was though, and I was long gone by the time that he managed to decelerate and turn around. Figuring that they might try using cameras to track me, and wanting to avoid the police, I quickly altered my course and slowed down for the safe route that would take me outside of the city and east, toward the villa.
Warren Carmichael fumed as he saw another email from his target/tormentor. He was in a foul mood already from suffering from a horrible case of diarrhea, but as usual, seeing an email from Danica Holmes was enough to make his mood much worse. He ran the message through the virus scanner, but there were no viruses and no attachments this time, just a simple message.
Hi Warren,
How are you doing? Feeling a little irregular today? I don’t know how I managed to keep the smile off my face when I handed you your morning cup of Joe. You should be more careful about what you drink and who gets it for you. Next time it could be cyanide instead of a laxative. I assume that the real Private Graves has reported in by now, though he was probably in dire need of a shower.
I’ll visit you again as someone else soon. I’ve been enjoying this time with you, but you haven’t taken my warnings to back off seriously. I think that I’ve proven by now that I can get to you no matter what security precautions you take. Count your blessings and manage your affairs, Warren. Your days are numbered.
Danica
He tried to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine as he read those final words. Somehow, that bitch had gotten past every security measure that he had in place. She had even passed through the retinal and fingerprint scanners and known the correct passcodes and phrases. Private Graves had indeed reported in just after lunch, smelling like the dumpster that he had woken up in, and hadn’t remembered anything after leaving the hotel for the morning coffee run.
This woman was terrifying in a way, but that just made him more determined to get her under his control. A creature like Danica Holmes could topple entire governments alone. Between her and the mermaids, he could change the course of future wars.
Warren’s musings were interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. The call display showed the caller to be Private Adams, so he answered. “What is it, Private?”
“Sir! You ordered that we follow anyone who seemed to know the people in the photo, we did as you ordered with a woman who offered Intel, but we just lost her,” the private reported.
Given the various false leads that his people had been given lately, probably from that shapeshifting freak Holmes, he had indeed ordered them to follow anybody who offered Intel. He felt like that damn woman had him on the back foot. It was not a feeling that he was used to, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. “Did you manage to get photos, Private?” he asked, his heart suddenly pounding rapidly in his chest.
“Yes, Sir! Just like you ordered, we got pictures of the woman and her car,” the young soldier replied enthusiastically.
A smile tugged at the corners of Warren’s lips. “Send them to Lieutenant Williams, and tell him that I want her found as soon as possible. The woman is a master of disguise so focus on the car.”
He had just enough time to hear, “Yes, Sir!” before disconnecting the call.
It was quarter to midnight by the time that Lieutenant Williams reported in with his laptop in hand. He had Williams go through the security measures and use the newly updated passphrases, and then inquired, “What have you got for me, Lieutenant?”
“This is the car, Sir,” he said as he showed Warren several photos of a bright pink sports car and a woman with long hair that was dyed a bright but darker shade of pink. “There can’t be more than one car, or maybe two, of this make and color in the city, it’s very distinctive. The woman in the photos is unknown, but when we narrowed down the camera footage over the past three weeks to show this car, she was most commonly shown entering and exiting it. The car also shows up near the time and place of all of the recent tips that we’ve gotten.”
“Where is the car now?” Warren pressed.
“I don’t know for sure, Sir, she found a route that avoided any cameras to evade our pursuit. I can make an educated guess though. Up until today, she hasn’t seemed to care about keeping a low profile or avoiding cameras, probably relying on her disguises, but aside from a few short stays at local hotels or motels, she probably isn’t living in Havana. Time stamps on the various footage show that the car goes days without showing up in Havana unless she was avoiding cameras for some reason, but most often, the last footage before those gaps shows the car leaving the city, traveling eastward down the coastal road.”
At last, that bitch had made a mistake. She was overconfident and she was going to regret it. Soon, she was going to be under his control and then he would use her to retrieve the mermaids as well, if she wasn’t already with them. Those mermaids needed water. He had assumed that they were laying low in Havana since that was where the mercs had most often appeared prior to his arrival, but what if they were hidden away somewhere along the coast?
Despite the discomfort that even now simmered in his bowels, Warren wore a self-satisfied smile. “Make sure that the pilots know what that car looks like, Lieutenant. I want choppers in the air ASAP with my strike teams aboard and searching the coast east of Havana for that car or anywhere that a large boat could be hidden from our low-profile patrols of the coast. Those mercs came here by boat and they probably intend on leaving that way too once things get too hot.”
The original mermaid image is © Kateryna Shevtsova | Dreamstime.com
Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.