SEAMONSTER: An Aquarathi Novella (The Aquarathi)

by Amalie Howard

“Do I?”

  Anya nods. “I got the impression that what she says goes. Not that it’s bad or anything, but even your parents seem to defer to her.”

  “Nerissa … is important,” I say. “She’s not my real sister by blood, but my parents are her foster parents. We’re keeping her under our wing until she comes of age.”

  “Like me.”

  “Sort of,” I agree and slip my fingers between hers. “So, speaking of, when do you come of age?” I say in a lighthearted voice. “I seem to recall you saying you had a birthday coming up.”

  “Today.”

  I stare at her. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  The look in her eyes makes everything inside of me come to a complete halt. “Because when a girl gets everything she’s ever wished for, there’s no need to bring it up. Today has been … perfect.”

  “Well, happy birthday,” I say, flushing.

  “Thank you.”

  Anya leans in toward me and I hold her tightly, only to become aware of a sudden, loud shouting on the port bow. “What’s going on?” I ask one of the stewards. “Why are we slowing down?”

  “Nothing, sir. There’s a boat in distress. We’re stopping to provide assistance. They’ve asked to use our radio.”

  “Tell the captain not to stop on my orders,” I shout, lurching to my feet.

  The steward’s eyes widen and he races off back in the direction from which he’d come. Anya and I exchange a look and we both follow him back up to the front. But our warning is too late as we stare at the three lethal-looking men holding automatic weapons pointed at our crew lying on the floor.

  “Anya, run,” I say, but beefy arms reach out to hold her in place, the cold butt of a muzzle pressing against my temple.

  “On your knees.” Frank leers in our direction as I do as he says, hands behind my head, my eyes on Anya and on the man stepping into view.

  “Well, hello, you two! Fancy seeing you here.” Marco’s voice is jovial, but the brutal look in his eyes is not. He’s going to make Anya pay for running away, and me for daring to help her. I can’t do much with a semi-automatic weapon trained at me, at least not without going full morph, so I decide to see how everything plays out. I try to meet her eyes to reassure her that everything’s going to be okay, but she’s staring at the ground as if afraid to look at me. It’s a look I’ve seen before and it makes my stomach turn cold.

  It’s a look of hopeless defeat.

  The Monsters Within

  Marco’s face is curled in a sneer as he sits in the captain’s seat at the helm, watching us. The scar seems more pronounced in his face, or maybe that’s because every time I see him, he gets more and more caricaturish. The rest of the crew has been tied up and put on Marco’s speedboat, and with the exception of his men, we are the only passengers on the Sea Star. Not unlike the others before they were moved from the yacht to the other boat, Anya and I are both bound and gagged.

  “Thought you could get the best of me, did you?” he asks, seeing my stare. “I have eyes and ears everywhere.” He eyes me, a look that says he’d rather gut me and leave me for the sharks than speak to me. “That sister of yours seems real nice. Your mother, too.”

  I don’t flinch at Marco’s threats. Nerissa and Soren are the least of my worries—either of them would take his head off in one snap of their very capable jaws. Instead, I just watch him with a measured, unflinching stare that does what it’s meant to. Anger snaps across his face.

  “Did our girl here tell you that she’s engaged? To me?” Marco asks, coming to his feet.

  One of his men waiting on the side steps in to take his place as he stalks toward us, stopping a hair’s breadth from Anya. She braces beside me, as if she’s accustomed to more than verbal cruelty from him. I almost shift into Aquarathi form then just at the thought of him ever laying a finger on her. Fangs cut into my lip and I swallow hard, forcing the rage-induced metamorphosis to remain at bay.

  He stoops down in front of her and pulls her gag from her mouth, running his fingers down her cheeks. She turns away instinctively and he grabs her chin in a rough motion, anger flaring once more. “Look at me.”

  “Marco, please,” Anya says, her voice brittle. “He has nothing to do with this, I promise you.”

  Marco laughs loudly. “He has everything to do with this. I can see it in every flare of his eyes, especially when I touch you like this.” Marco slides his hand down her neck into the valley between her breasts, his finger disappearing beneath the lapels of her shirt into the hollow there. She doesn’t move but I can tell that she’s holding her breath, and is once more refusing to look at me as if she knows that it’s the one thing that will break me. Watching me carefully, Marco cups her breast roughly. “She didn’t tell you that she belongs to me, did she?”

  “I broke it off,” Anya protests, shrinking back into the seat away from the thrust of his palm.

  His hand slides up to grasp her throat. “That’s the thing, my love. You don’t break anything off with me. You’re going to testify and then we’re going to be married whether you like it or not. You owe me.”

  “I owe you?” she says, a disbelieving look on her face. I admire her courage, standing up for herself with Marco’s fingers still clasping her slender neck. “Your father extorted my family for years, used our business to bring drugs into the country.” She pauses as his eyes flick to her. “Oh, I know. I heard people talking. I heard your own father say as much right before he shot mine in cold blood. You think I don’t know why you played me all those months? You want to run the company because you know that my father’s majority shareholdings fall to me.”

  “Such a clever girl, aren’t you?” His tone is acerbic. “Well, my dear, you are the older sister and heir to his fortune, but Penny isn’t that far behind you in age, should you prove difficult. And, of course, she adores me. So think of your dear little sister, because you’re going to do exactly as I tell you, understand?” Anya’s face drains of all color at his sordid threat. Marco turns his attention to me. “And then I’m going to tie two bricks to your new friend’s legs and let him make a few new friends down under.”

  “I hate you,” Anya hisses.

  “No, my darling, you love me. Perhaps I need to give you a reminder of how much you used to love me?” He nods to two of the men and they grab her arms, yanking her toward one of the cabins down below. Marco smiles deliberately as they drag her, kicking and screaming, below deck. “I want to have a chat with my new friend while you get ready for me,” he calls after her.

  The sound of her voice drifts upward. “Marco, please. I’ll do anything you want, just let him go.”

  I push against my restraints. Marco’s eyebrow lifts, a sneer pulling down one corner of his lips. “She really does like you! Oh, wait, you have something to say?” he asks, satisfied that he’s finally able to get a rise out of me. He yanks the gag from my mouth. “Go on, then, let’s hear it.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  “You shouldn’t have done what you did,” he says in a conversational voice as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Now you’re going to pay the price for it, for touching something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “She’s a person and she belongs to no one.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Marco says. “Anya Delmonico is my property. And when people steal things from me, I repay them in kind. I hope she was worth it.”

  “I am going to tear you limb from limb,” I say in the calmest voice I can manage, despite the gun lodged in my neck. With my teeth.

  Despite the relative hardness of our scales in Aquarathi form, I can’t take the risk that Frank won’t shoot while I’m in mid-transformation, and super alien strength aside, we’re not impervious to a volley of semi-automatic bullets, especially ones at point-blank range. And then I won’t be able to help Anya at all.

  “Release her or you will regret it, I promise you.”

  Marco stands, cupping his crotch and li
cking his lips. “Before or after I give her what she really wants?” He winks and moves to follow his men down below. He stops at the galley. “Tell you what, if you really behave, maybe I’ll let you have one last go with her after the guys.”

  “Hurt her and it will be the last thing you do.”

  “Sure it will,” he smirks. “Have fun with Frank.”

  After Marco disappears, it’s just Frank and me, and the man piloting the yacht. I know we don’t have much time. I glance at the coastline. We’ve just passed Catalina and I can see the outline of Santa Barbara Island in the distance. Focusing all my energies, I connect the water in my body to the ocean around us. I’m nowhere near as powerful as Nerissa, but I do have some sway. The surface turns choppy, eddies swirling in the water.

  “What’s going on?” I hear Frank say to the guy at the wheel.

  “I don’t know. Currents are funky out here.”

  I take a deep breath, calling up a large swell, one that makes the yacht tip enough so that Frank—and the barrel of the gun—goes sliding to the far side of the leather bench. And then I shift. Deep golden scales shimmer into place as my bones crack outward, replacing vulnerable human skin like a protective shield. The bonds around my wrists separate as if they’re nothing but paper and I stand, stretching the kinks out of my neck. I don’t change fully, just enough to defend myself and stay on the boat. Our true Aquarathi form is far larger than a human, and I need to be able to get to Anya.

  Frank’s eyes pop as if he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing—a half-monster, half-boy with scales covering his body and sharp-edged alien features. His gaze skips from my face to my human clothing to the scales along my limbs, and he blinks wildly, shaking his head and brandishing his weapon. My hands elongate, talons stretching from the pads of my fingers as I seize the nozzle of his gun and twist upward. The metal curls like putty in my palms, rendering it useless. Then I grab him by the collar and bring him nose-to-nose. I flare my jeweled eyes—the ones hidden behind the human ones—and bare a row of sharply pointed teeth. The sour smell of urine permeates the fresh sea air. He opens his mouth and closes it like a fish gasping for air.

  “Say hello to the sharks for me,” I say, and toss him bodily into the yacht’s churning wake. Black thunderclouds roll across the sky. I’m pretty sure they’re all in response to me.

  The man at the helm pulls a gun from his waistband. I move lightning fast, hopping off the side of the seating to corner him against the wheel, and knock the gun from his hand. I cock my head and study him like he’s an insect.

  “What are you?” he whispers.

  “Ever watch those movies where those great creatures from the depths of the ocean take down whole ships and eat all the sailors and no one ever hears from them again?” I say, watching the man’s eyes glaze over with fear. “Yeah? You know the ones? Well, that’s me.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a hand holding a knife dart outward and I let it connect with my torso. The blade cuts through the shirt, but bends and snaps against my scales beneath it. I push a glimmer into his brain, more forcibly than I’ve ever done in my life. His stare goes catatonic. Sit here and drive. Do nothing but drive. Nod to show that you understand what you must do. The man nods dully, his fingers glued to the wheel.

  With a glance over my shoulder to make sure my powers of suggestion are still working—considering I’ve never actually used them this violently before—I swing down into the lower cabin. I trace Anya by scent to the master suite. I take out the man standing guard there as well as the other man who is in the process of looting Aldon’s property on the yacht.

  Four down. One to go.

  Crashing through the door, my eyes snap to Marco whose shirt is off and his pants unbuttoned. “What the hell?” Marco snarls at the disturbance.

  He squints to the open doorway and I realize that he can’t quite see me in the shadowy darkness, even though I can see him clearly with my Aquarathi vision. My gaze spans the room. Ripped clothing is strewn across the floor. Anya is cowering on the bed, the satin coverlet drawn up to her chin. A trickle of blood dampens her temple and one of her wrists is attached to the bedpost with a plastic tie. Forgetting everything, I feel a surge of fury so sharp that it’s like a hundred nails clawing into me all at once.

  But before I can move, a huge screeching noise rents the air just as the bottom of the yacht collides with something. Something big. The ensuing crash flings me to the floor as the sound of metal being ripped apart surrounds us. The sides of the boat fold in like paper, the ocean rushing in to fill the space. Scrambling to my feet, I see the jagged tip of a rock protruding through the hull. We’ve run aground.

  Marco has disappeared, and the cabin is rapidly filling with seawater. I lurch toward Anya, my brain belatedly registering that the bed is already underwater, which means so is she. I break the plastic tie as gently as I can with a sharp claw and gather her shaking body into my arms. “You’re going to have to hold your breath,” I tell her. She flinches away from me and nods. I try not to be affected by the way she’s looking at me, but it’s not like I’m anything she’s ever seen before. My transformation is more monster than boy than it’d been the first time we’d met.

  Holding her closely, I swim through the gaping hole in the side of the Sea Star, pushing past all the wreckage until we kick to the surface. Anya breaks out of my grasp the minute she gulps in a mouthful of air. As soon as she gets her bearings, she starts swimming toward the shoreline. My brain registers the landmass as Santa Barbara Island. The idiot had steered the vessel straight into the rocks surrounding the southern tip of the island. With a sigh, I shift back into full human form and follow Anya.

  Standing there shivering in her underwear, she stares at me and scuttles backward at my approach. Her arms close around her bare midriff as if trying to cover and protect herself all at once. From me. I hold my hands up in the air in a non-threatening motion and carefully pull my damp shirt over my head. I’d only shifted enough to defend myself, and apart from the knife slit, the shirt is still intact. I hand it to her. After a beat, she takes it and slips her arms into the sleeves.

  “What are you?” she whispers.

  Unlike the answer I gave to the man earlier, I don’t want to scare her any more than she already is. “A sparkly vampire fish?” I say with a wry smile.

  Her eyes widen. “Are you human?”

  “No.”

  She shivers, pulling my shirt more tightly around her. She steps backward again, this time against a sharp outcropping of rocks. “If you’re not human, then what are you?”

  “He’s a goddamned freak!” a voice shouts, darting out from behind a nearby rock. Marco slips beside Anya who, to my surprise, doesn’t move away from him. She eyes me with the same mistrust that he does. I’ve become the threat, not Marco.

  “Anya,” I say gently.

  “Don’t listen to a word this creature says,” Marco snaps, waving a long knife. “He killed everyone on the ship.”

  “Did you?” she blurts out.

  “No,” I say quickly and then shake my head. “I mean, yes. I was trying to get to you. They were going to kill us both. I threw Frank overboard and I don’t know if the others are alive or not.” I stare at her, willing her to trust me. “Anya, you know me.”

  I can see her thinking it through, weighing my words. Apparently Marco sees the same thing because something ugly flashes across his face. The knife in his hand moves in a swift arc to her throat as he shifts to stand behind her.

  “What are you doing?” she says in shock.

  “Guaranteeing my safety,” he says. “Now move.” They both sidestep to the far side of the rocks, his knife never leaving her neck. I’m guessing he won’t hurt her—but I can’t take the chance that he will. When people are cornered, they don’t think clearly. I move very slowly so that I can see around the rocky bend where there’s a small sandy cove. A lifeboat from the Sea Star is tugged up on the sand. “Now get in the boat,” he tells her. />
  “Just let her go,” I say to Marco. “And I’ll let you live.”

  “I have the boat.”

  “I don’t need a boat,” I say, letting the gold lights shimmer along my skin. “Remember?”

  “Good luck catching us.”

  But I can see the indecision on his face. He doesn’t quite know what I am or what I’m capable of. I’m running through all the scenarios in my head, the ones that don’t involve hurting Anya, when she jabs an elbow into his stomach, making him drop the knife and double over. She scrambles out of his way, uncaring of the sharp rocks cutting into her bare feet. I take the opening without hesitation, charging Marco and connecting with his jaw. He goes flying, his body landing half in and half out of the boat. More concerned with Anya than Marco, I leave him there and turn to her.

  “Anya, please give me a chance to explain. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  “I know you won’t, Speio,” she says before running straight into my arms. “You saved me once. I’m sorry about before. I was just … startled.”

  I close my arms around her body, embracing her tightly and unable to speak. I’d feared the worst—that she wouldn’t be able to come to terms with what I am. But Anya keeps surprising me. Holding her carefully, I study the cut on her temple. My thumb brushes the skin there and she winces. “He cut you?”

  “His ring,” she says. “I fought him. He didn’t like that.”

  A haze of red fills my vision. I swear I’m going to break that bastard in half. Right now. I half turn as the sound of a motor firing up has both Anya and I whirling toward where we’d left Marco. He’s already pushed out to sea but stands in the middle of the raft, a machine gun in hand.

  “Stay here and die then, bitch,” he shouts to Anya, pointing the weapon straight toward her.

  Without thinking, I shove Anya behind me and shield her body with mine just as a hail of bullets rain down upon us. I’m in mid-transition—half-human, half-Aquarathi form—when the shots reach us. Some of them pierce my human skin and I bite back a shout at the pain. Others slam into my Aquarathi hide. I take one in my left shoulder, and I feel the bullet lodge into my tissue like a hot ball of lead. Marco yells a scream of triumph as I fall to one knee, gasping.