Too Deep

Very Interesting

"I didn't-didn't know wh-what I was doing."

"You didn't?" He asked in a dangerous tone.

"I'll help you kill him." I gasped out. My throat felt as though I'd swallowed twenty pounds of cotton. Which was now, rubbing it raw.

"Now that...Is very Interesting. Would you really do that?"

"Yes! I don't want to go with him."

"You don't have to." Hunter's tone crooned with eagerness as he lowered me back down the hood of my vehicle, until I stood before him. "I can keep you safe from the sharks."

Relief washed through me as my breathing normalized.

He stood over me waiting patiently. "How could you help me?"

"I could lure him out to you?"

"Near the water?"

"Yes." I responded automatically.

"No!" He roared. His eyes flashing yellow and his hand seeming to form claws around my neck as his shoulders swelled and shrunk, in a single blink. "We don't go anywhere near the water. Do you think I'm stupid?"

Now his violent rage ran even higher than before. He dragged me toward him and breathed near my face. I was struck by the coppery tinge of his breath.

He smells like blood.

"It's funny how humans are so quick to bond with the fish, once they've sung their pretty song to them. Did he sing to you?"

Sing? I didn't know if he meant literally or figuratively. But the clear response was what I said.

"No. I don't think so. You said that the casters made you, the guardians." I said slowly.

His eyes narrowed instantly. "Yes. What of it?"

"Aren't you supposed to protect humans, then?"

"Not the disloyal."

"What is disloyal?"

"Those that have committed themselves to the fish. They're no longer loyal to their own species."

"I've done nothing to be disloyal!"

I don't even know what's happening!

"I could snap your neck like a stick." He eyed me.

I had no idea what I was doing. But stalling seemed the best call just now.

"I don't' think you'll be useful to me afterall." He snatched my neck again. Catching my shoulder in his other fist and giving me a black-eyed look that told me he was going to do it.

He's going to kill me.

Just as his forearm tightened and his wrist began to twist in the motion of snapping my neck, there was a roar next to us.

A man's shout. "Don't touch her!"

Malius was such a blur, I could barely see him.

It registered in my numbed brain, that he was the one shouting at this monster.

He's here.

Malius charged.

Hunter released me and rounded to face him. "I have been waiting for you."

His hand snatched out to catch Malius' neck.

Malius ducked it and then shoved a palm up on the bottom of Hunter's chin. There was a bone crunching sound as something snapped brutally.