SEAMONSTER: An Aquarathi Novella (The Aquarathi) (4 page)

“I look kind of cool.”

“You reminded me just then of Tidus from
Final Fantasy
, so I wanted to draw it.” She sees my vacant look and sighs. “It’s a video game, never mind.”

“Not a sparkle to be seen,” I say
to cover up my severe lack of gaming knowledge. I’m going to have to do some serious Googling later to up my street cred. “You’re pretty good. What else do you have in here?”

Anya
tries to snatch the book away, but I block her with my body and flick through the pages. My eyes register the handsome but hard-looking man in the first few sheets. Her fiancé, I presume. He has a long scar through one eyebrow, and even the drawing emanates a cold sense of ruthlessness. I dislike him immediately, and then feel guilty because the guy’s dead.

Sensing Anya’s growing discomfort, I flick to the drawing of me—the first one I’d seen. “You gave me a tail? A
tail
?”

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” she says, reaching around my torso for the notebook. The shock of the contact of her warm arm across my ribs makes us both freeze. Wide
cornflower-blue eyes collide with mine, and the rush of feeling in my chest takes me wholly by surprise. “I told you I was disoriented,” she says as her fingers close around the notebook.

I laugh gruffly and release the notebook, trying to dissipate the sudden tension as Anya falls backward, book in hand.
I can still feel the brand of her arm across my chest. “Shiny vampire man fish,” I joke. “Anime gaming hero. I am made of awesome.”

Her lip twitches, but she slides the book into a bag lying on the sand at her side. I can see from the expressions playing across her face that she’s
getting ready to bolt. I’m not sure if it’s me, or the fact that I saw some of her private drawings. Sure enough, she stands.

“I have to go,” Anya says,
brushing the sand off her shorts. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Wil
l you be here tomorrow?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet and dusting my hands together. She’s tall, I realize, almost as tall as me. Then again, she’d been horizontal when we first met.

Anya b
rushes her hair out of her face, darting a quick look to one of the houses looming behind us. So she is staying on the beach. Good to know. “Maybe,” she says.

“Ok
ay, I’ll be here. Same time, same place?”

She stares at me, clutching her bag to her chest as if it’s a shield between us. “You don’t have to try to save me, you know. I’m fine. Yesterday was a … moment of idiocy, nothing more.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

“I know.”

“I’m not some charity case,” she adds. “And don’t say ‘I know.’”

I surprise her—and myself—with my answer. “I like talking with you,” I say honestly. “And I don’t think you’re a charity case. Plus, I need to prove that I’m not a complete idiot, once I find out who this
Final Fantasy
person is.” She doesn’t smile back so I meet her gaze and opt for a more honest approach. “Look, the thing is, we’re all fighting some kind of battle. Some days, the battle wins. Other days, we do. The point is to keep going. One day it’ll be over, and it will be one more thing that you survived.” I glance at the ocean, where the tide is coming in and the sun is starting to set. The gold-tipped waves are crashing in toward the shore. My voice lowers. “Sometimes, you have bad waves, ones that will work you and try to drown you. Other times, you have ones that are perfect … ones that are worth all the rough ones. They’re so perfect that once you get on them, you can coast all the way in to the shore. Those are the ones that are worth waiting for, and fighting through all the bad ones.” I shrug, and turn back to Anya. “One wave at a time, that’s my motto.”

“What’s your battle?” she asks me quietly.

I don’t respond for a long minute. I’ve never opened up to anyone, and a part of me still wants to keep my secrets secret. But another part wants to let them out … or at least one of them. “I don’t want to be here. We’re not from around here, either. This isn’t where I belong and I want to go home.”

“Where are you from?”

“The other side of the world,” I say.

“
I don’t understand. Why can’t you go home?”

“It’s … safer for us here.”

Anya doesn’t say anything, but then she smiles. “I’ll try to be here tomorrow. Thanks for everything, Speio. It was nice talking to you, too.”

After Anya leaves, I don’t watch to see which house on El Paseo Grande she
’s walking toward—at least, not overtly. I walk down toward the water’s edge and form a glimmer, pushing myself outward, and follow her up the beach. The house she enters is modern and cream-colored with a pool on the front deck. She looks back a couple times to where I’m standing, but I don’t turn around. She doesn’t go inside, sitting on the pool deck instead, and opens her notebook on the lounger. She writes my name beneath the drawing of me on the beach, and fills in some areas with shadow before closing the pages and leaning back on the chair. I wish my glimmer could tell me what she’s thinking, but only Nerissa has that kind of power.

I dissipate the glimmer with a
thought and walk down the beach until I’m out of Anya’s sight. I swim out to sea, through all the breaking waves until I’m well past the surf zone. I don’t shift fully and let myself morph just enough so that I can breathe underwater. By the time I reach my house, my human arms are sore, but it’s a good kind of ache. I feel invigorated, and it’s a feeling I’d almost forgotten. That feeling of restlessness prickling under my skin like a constant reminder that I don’t belong here in this world has faded. I wonder if it’s because of Anya.

Nerissa
is lounging in our saltwater pool. Her eyes are curious, but she doesn’t ask where I’ve been. Instead, she throws me a long measured look and closes her eyes. I know she can feel whatever I’m feeling, and while a part of me resents the inherent intrusion, I welcome the fact that it’s a shared burden. That’s the power of the heir to the Aquarathi throne. I sense her silent invitation and join her in the pool.

“You seem happy,” she says quietly. “Not as
… upset.”

“I guess.”

One eye flicks open. “Is it because of the girl? The one from yesterday?”

“Maybe.” I’m not sure I want to put what I’ve experienced with Anya into words. It feels too fragile
, as if it’s somehow going to disappear when I talk about it.

“Did you—”

I preempt the question. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“And the drawing?”

“She has a vivid imagination. It’s fine.”

Nerissa
closes her eye and relaxes into the water beside me, bright gold lights flickering along her skin. The silvery gold lights beneath mine flicker in automatic response to the royal call of hers. “That’s good,” she says. “It’s nice for you to make connections with people. This is our home now, for better or worse.”

For once, I don’t feel an angry retort rise to my lips.
“She’s human, Riss.”

“So?”

“We can’t bond with them. There’s no point in making
connections
.”

Nerissa
is quiet for a moment, and I know she’s thinking about
dvija
. “That doesn’t mean you can’t get to know her. Look at Jenna. She’s a human and she’s my best friend.”

“That’s different.”

“Spey,” she says, a trace of irritation creeping into her voice. “Just accept it for what it is, okay? If she seems like a nice girl, then be nice back. It’s not all that hard. Everything isn’t about bonding or not bonding. Human relationships are inherently complex. It doesn’t have to be sexual to mean something.” Nerissa takes a breath and immerses her entire body beneath the water, shifting into partial Aquarathi form. Deep golden scales glisten along her arms as iridescent, multicolored fins frame sharp-edged alien features.

She finishes the rest of the conversation mentally.
Give it a chance. What do you have to lose?

I stare at her, feeling the
sharp desire to do just that pooling in my stomach. Nerissa’s right. I don’t have anything to lose … not to a human, anyway.

Anya isn’t there the next day, or the day after that.
In fact, an entire week passes before I see her again, and it’s not at the beach. It’s at a local supermarket, and she’s not alone. Two beefy, fierce-looking men who look like they mean business flank her on either side. Anya’s eyes go wide as she sees me. She shakes her head in an odd sort of panic and slips out of view down the neighboring aisle. The burly men follow her as she beats a hasty exit. She seems terrified.

“Hey, Anya,” I yell out
from the sliding doors as she’s escorted to a fancy Bentley parked in the lot with dark tinted windows. Anya disappears into its depths without answering or looking at me, and the car squeals out of the parking lot. A part of me wants to let it go, but another can’t. What if she’s in trouble? Without a second thought, I hop on my skateboard and manage to keep track of the car through the streets of the neighborhood, hanging on to the back of a pick-up truck at one point. I lose sight of the car at an intersection, but take a gamble and skate through a shortcut towards El Paseo Grande, hoping that they’ll head to Anya’s place.

Sitting near the opposite curb from the house, I wait. As the minutes tick by, I rake my hands through my hair in frustration. It could be a long shot. They could be going back to L.A.
Or somewhere else. I’m just about to leave and trail her by smell if I have to when out of the corner of my eye, I notice the car approaching and turning into Anya’s driveway. I cross the street and grab my skateboard, hanging back until Anya is ushered out of the car by one of the two guys.

“Anya,” I
call out again. This time she does look at me. Her face is a careful mask, showing nothing. She says something to the two men and walks swiftly toward me. They wait beside the car, eyeing me with barely veiled hostility. “Who’re your new friends?” I ask.

“
Speio, you shouldn’t be here.”

“You weren’t at the beach for the last week,” I say. “I was worried.”

“I was … sick,” she says.

I know it’s a lie as soon as it leaves her mouth, and I can see her begging me with her eyes to just believe her and leave it alone. My eyes flick to the men behind her. They look like they’re packing something under those leather jackets.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.” But Anya’s answer is too quick, and the way her eyes are darting over her shoulder makes me think that the opposite is true.

“You can tell me,” I say quietly.

“I can’t,” she says with another despe
rate look at the car behind us, just as the second passenger door opens and someone steps out. It’s a young man, perhaps a few years older than us. I recognize him instantly as the one from the drawing. She’d said her fiancé was dead, so who is this guy? He’s dressed in a three-piece suit that doesn’t quite fit the California vibe, and looks even more ruthless in person. A soft huff leaves Anya’s lips, a shadow of something slinking across her eyes as the man approaches.

“Who’s this?” he says in a
deceptively even voice.

“Someone I met on the beach.”

“Hello, someone her royal highness met on the beach,” he mocks in an oily voice that makes me want to smash his teeth in. “What’s your name?”

“Anya,” I say, ignoring him.

Annoyance flashes across the man’s face at my rudeness and he grabs my arm, twisting me to face him. “I was talking to you.”

“Get off me,” I growl. Something menacing underscores the tenor of my voice and t
he man steps back without releasing his hold, his eyes narrowing. I may be shorter than him, but he’s quick to recognize another predator when he sees one. I let my fury show, the coiled muscle between his fingertips bunching in angry, visceral response. I take his wrist between my forefinger and thumb, pressing ever so gently. The man hisses in pain and clutches his injured hand to his chest. I step between Anya and him just as the other two men rush to his side, scowls on their faces.

The man smiles, one that goes nowhere near his eyes, and he extends one hand. “Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Marco, Anya’s fiancé. And you are?”

“A friend.”

“
Nice to meet you,
friend
,” he says in a tone that means anything but as he spits the last word. “You’ll have to excuse us. Urgent family business and all. Anya here has a lot of explaining to do, and her family is worried.”

I think quickly
. If this guy is who he says he is, it has to be bad for Anya to have told me that he’d died. I can feel the fear rushing around in her blood, smell it rising from her skin. “She’s missed a lot of work at the Marine Center,” I say. “They almost put in a missing person’s ad and got the local police involved, but I told them I’d stop by one last time to see if she was at home.” Marco’s eyes narrow at the mention of police, confirming my suspicions that there’s a lot more behind his sudden appearance. I shrug. “I mean, they may take my word for it that she’s okay, but it’ll be better if she shows up for work herself.”

“Where’s this Marine Center?”

“A few blocks south of here.”

Marco eyes
Anya with distaste. “Is what he’s saying true?”

Please say yes
, I will her silently. Her eyes dart from me to Marco as if she knows exactly what he’s capable of.
Let me help you
, I beg with my eyes. If she disagrees with what I’ve said, there’s nothing I will be able to do.

“Yes,” she says eventually, her voice a faint whisper.

“Fine,” Marco snarls. “Go check in. Frank will drive you while we wait here.” His voice lowers. “Anya, don’t try anything stupid. I don’t have to tell you what will happen.”

She swallows hard, and I
bristle at the overt threat, but she nods. Frank, the bigger of the two men, motions toward the car and we both get in. The interior is all dark leather, and reeks of cigar smoke and an unidentifiable scent that makes my blood crawl. Anya and I sit in silence the few blocks to the center. I slide my hand across the leather seat and cover hers with mine, squeezing gently, but hers remains limp and numb beneath mine. The beaten look on her face makes something fiercely protective bloom in my chest.

We arrive at the Marine Center and
, as instructed by Marco, Frank follows us inside. Taking a deep breath, I push out a glimmer toward the security guard at the front. I’ve never tried to manipulate a human before, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I slip into the guard’s brain, feeling my waters connect with his. Holding strong against the onslaught of all his thoughts, I smoothly place the suggestion into the guard’s mind that the man following behind is a threat. There’s no guarantee it will work, but I have to try.

When I withdraw, I nearly slump against Anya who is watching me with a wide-eyed look
, cradling her bruised fingers with her other hand. I must have had her hand in a death grip when I did the glimmer. I flash my credentials to the guard, holding Anya beside me to indicate that she’s with me, and walk past him. I hold my breath as the guard stops Frank and assertively tells him that the back is for employees only. Frank’s face goes thunderous, but there’s nothing he can do short of causing a scene. I usher Anya ahead of me through the doors before he can stop either of us.

“Are you ok
ay?” I ask Anya under my breath, stroking her hands.

“Yes,
I’m fine,” she says. “Are you? Because you were out of it for a moment back there. You looked like you were somewhere else.”

Yeah. I was inside Mr. Security Guard’s head and it wasn’t pretty.
I clear my throat, and rub her fingers gently between mine. “Sorry about that. I was trying to figure out what to do. Minor panic attack that the guard would let him tag along with us, but it worked out.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done,
Speio,” she says in a rush. “Frank is a bad man, and Marco is worse. You never should have gotten involved with me.”

I pull her into a quiet corner of one of the back rooms, one holding a giant
saltwater tank. It’s for injured sea animals, and right now the only creature in one of them is a large Mako shark with a mangled tailfin. “I thought you said your fiancé was dead?”

“I thought he was, too,” she admits. “I … shot him, and then I ran. I didn’t think he
was alive or that he would find me here, but he has. It’s over.”

“You
shot
him?” I say incredulously. I look at Anya in a new light. Marco had called her “her royal highness” in a disparaging tone as if she were someone of importance. “Why? What’s over? Who are you?”

She sighs deeply. “You should have just left me there in the water. And now you’re going to be in danger because of me.
Marco doesn’t like loose ends, or for anyone to get close to me.”

“Tell me who you are,” I say.

“My name is Delmonico,” she breathes as if that explains everything. I stare at her blankly. “Daughter of Anthony Delmonico?” she says at my expression.

Recognition sparks. The name itself evokes a memory of something. Maybe I’d seen it on television or heard it on the radio. I reach for the memory, trying to
dig into it and get to its source. Shadowy images from a newscast fill my brain—a notorious crime lord from the east coast being arrested and put on trial for the murder of another man. The man who’d been killed was Anthony Delmonico. His daughter, Anya Delmonico, the only one who’d seen the act and would be called to testify against her father’s killer, was missing. The trial had been postponed. She was the heir to a multibillion-dollar export empire her father had left behind.

Oh.

I think of the Aquarathi, and what they’d do if they knew I’d transformed in front of a human girl—a half-conscious human girl—but human nonetheless. Our laws are clear and are unbreakable. If any human sees us, they have to die. Our existence cannot be made known, and nothing I can say or do will stop them from eliminating Anya if they suspect she has any inkling of what we are. She and I have more in common than either of us knows.

“I’m not in
any danger, Anya. No one can hurt me.”

“You have no idea who they are and what they can do,” she says
on a ragged sob, wringing her hands and staring at the doorway as if she’s expecting Frank to come bursting through any moment. “They’ll kill you.”

“No one’s going to kill anyone,” I reply in a soothing voice. I pull her shaking body into my arms, stroking her hair until she calms.
“Is that the real reason you jumped from the cliff the other day?”

“I was afraid of being scared all the time,” she says against my shoulder. “I wanted to see how hard it would be if push came to shove.”

“It’s not the answer.”

“I know.”

I breathe into her hair. “Hey, that’s my line. So why do they want you so badly?”

“The case the D.
A. has against Marco’s father is solid without my testimony. He’ll get jail time for sure, especially because he’s a known criminal. I’m the final nail in the coffin because of what I saw, but Marco wants me to lie on the stand and get his father out.”

“We could go to the police, get you some help.”

Anya raises a tearstained face to mine. “I was in witness protection. They found me. Killed everyone. I shot Marco in the shoulder, and I jumped on the first bus I could find. It came here. The house was up for rental so I took it, just to figure things out.”

“How did you pay for it?”

“Cash. I withdrew funds.” She lifts her head and exhales sharply. “
That’s
how he found me. How could I be so stupid?”

“You’re human, and we all make mistakes.”
I stroke her temple with the pad of my thumb, ignoring the fact that I’d just lumped myself in with the humans. “Seriously, how is that guy your fiancé?”

“Ex-fiancé,” she murmurs. “
I broke it off months ago, after I found out that Marco wasn’t who I thought he was and that he and his father had been extorting my father for years. We were supposed to be married after I turned eighteen. I guess my father tried to make a stand after I broke off my engagement. And he got killed for it, right in front of me. Marco still wants to get his hands on the family business, and get his father off. He won’t kill me, at least not now, but he will once he gets what he wants.”

“He sounds like a great catch.”

Anya smothers a muffled laugh against my shirt. “I was an easy target,” she says quietly. “When a guy notices you, and only you, it can go to your head. You don’t see past anything but how much they want to be with you, and the attention is … intoxicating. It’s blinding. And then you think you’re in love, but you’re really in love with the idea of love. And then when they have you where they want you, they kill your father and threaten to kill your sister and take everything away. People are horrible, manipulating liars.”

“Not all of them,” I hear myself say.

“You tell me the name of one good person that you know.”

“You’re a good person,” I say.

“You don’t know a thing about me, Speio.” She pushes away and walks toward the tank where the lone shark is swimming. She watches the shark’s motions as if they’re hypnotic. “I tried to kill a man. I tried to kill Marco. I
wanted
to kill him. And I tried to kill myself because I’m a coward looking for the easy way out.”