Maureen gave the order to launch, and Windrunner lifted from the platform with smooth efficiency, turning toward the bay’s interior, where the Skun Islands rose from the water in irregular formations.

The flight took two hours at cruising speed, the ship passing over remarkably clear water, allowing them to see coral formations and schools of fish moving beneath the surface with enough detail that Jake could make out individual creatures at depths that should have been too far to distinguish.

The Skun Islands appeared gradually through the afternoon haze, a scattered archipelago of perhaps twenty separate landmasses ranging from bare rocks jutting from the waves to larger islands covered in vegetation and ringed with white sand beaches.

Maureen brought Windrunner down to a lower altitude, the ship skimming perhaps fifty feet above the water’s surface while the crew scanned the area with spyglasses and enhanced vision abilities.

Nothing.

No ships. No signs of recent activity. No smoke from cooking fires or evidence of camps. The islands sat peaceful and empty in the afternoon sun, waves lapping against their shores with the rhythmic sound that water made when nothing was disturbing them.

They circled the archipelago twice, checking the larger islands more closely, even landing Windrunner on one that looked like it might support a temporary base camp.

Jake and Maureen disembarked with three of the crew while the other three stayed aboard to maintain the ship, and they searched the island’s interior for any indication that Elizabeth’s crew had been using it.

Still nothing.

The island held only the normal detritus of an uninhabited place—fallen trees, bird nests, animal tracks in the sand that led to water sources.

No human footprints. No discarded supplies. No evidence that anyone had been here recently enough to leave marks.

Jake stood at the island’s highest point and looked out over the bay, his enhanced vision scanning the water and the other islands visible from this vantage; his blood sense extended as far as it would reach, trying to detect concentrations of life that might indicate a crew or a ship hidden somewhere.

He found schools of fish and several larger marine creatures that might be sharks or something similar, but nothing that registered as human or organized.

"She’s not here," Maureen said from behind him, frustration clear in her voice.

"Either the information was wrong or she moved before we arrived."

"Or she’s better at hiding than we expected," Jake said.

They returned to Windrunner and prepared to expand their search pattern, the crew moving through their tasks with quick ease despite the disappointment of finding nothing at the location they’d been directed to.

Jake stood at the ship’s rail and looked down at the water passing beneath them, watching the light play across the surface in patterns that shifted with the ship’s movement.

As he stood there, watching the water make waves, suddenly there was movement underneath the water and a figure moving.

That was when he saw her.

The woman appeared in the water directly below where he was standing, rising from the depths with impossible speed, her face breaking the surface as she looked upward toward the ship.

She was beautiful in the way that dangerous things were beautiful—sharp features and large eyes and long dark hair that spread around her in the water like ink dispersing. Her skin was pale, almost luminescent in the filtered sunlight, and when she smiled up at Jake, the expression was warm and inviting.

She was the kind of woman that would make any man gaze at her, making him lose himself in her beauty. Her eyes were so captivating that they made Jake stand there.

She stretched one hand upward from the water, reaching toward him with fingers that were slightly too long to be fully human, and her mouth moved in words he couldn’t hear from this distance, but the gesture was clear.

Give me your hand. Come down to me.

Jake stared at her, his mind processing what he was seeing.

"Jake, move back!" Maureen’s voice cut through his fascination, sharp and urgent. She had just come up on deck and saw Jake staring at the water, and when she saw the woman, she knew immediately who she was.

The woman in the water tilted her head, still smiling, still reaching, and then her mouth opened wider than any human mouth could open, and Jake saw the teeth.

Rows of them. Sharp and triangular like a shark’s, gleaming white against the darkness of her throat, designed for tearing rather than chewing.

He stepped away from the rail as the creature lunged upward from the water with explosive force, her hand—now clearly clawed rather than merely long-fingered—raking the air where Jake’s extended arm would have been if he’d accepted her invitation.

She fell back into the water with barely a splash, disappearing beneath the surface as quickly as she’d appeared.

Then the water around Windrunner erupted with movement.

Mermaids broke the surface in a circle around the ship, dozens of them, their beautiful faces and lethal smiles creating a ring of predatory attention that made Jake’s blood-sense scream warnings in every direction simultaneously.

They didn’t attack immediately—just surrounded the ship and watched with those too-large eyes, their movements in the water graceful and coordinated in ways that suggested intelligence and planning rather than animal instinct.

"Combat positions!" Maureen shouted, and her crew responded instantly, weapons appearing in hands that had been relaxed seconds before, the six adventurers spreading across the deck to cover all approaches.

The mermaids began making sounds.

Not speech—something else, a combination of clicking and whistling and long, drawn-out notes that resonated across the water like whale song but sharper, more complex, clearly communicative.

They were talking to each other in a language Jake didn’t understand, coordinating something, and the circle around the ship began to tighten.

Jake activated his blood sense to its full extension, trying to get an accurate count of how many mermaids were actually surrounding them.

He stopped counting at forty when more kept appearing from the depths, rising to join the circle, their numbers growing with each passing second.

"Maureen," he said quietly, "we’re outnumbered."

"I can see that," Maureen said, her own sword already drawn, her Class I presence radiating outward with the kind of controlled power that made the air around her feel heavier.