SEAMONSTER: An Aquarathi Novella (The Aquarathi) by Amalie Howard Read Free Book Online

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