The younger ones and the puppies surround my young son, gambol about him and vie for his attention. I grin. As much as he’s grown, the beasts still tower above him.
Only the few older dogs and the pack’s leader, Scar, keep their distance. They know better than to trust our kind. The younger ones have no memories of the many times I’ve had to cull the pack. They have no understanding that I’ve been trying to let their numbers grow back to full strength from the few that were left after the attack that devastated their ranks four years ago.
Henri laughs as the dogs push against him. He pets some and allows others to lick him. When one of the larger pups jumps up and almost knocks him over, the boy just steps back and regains his balance. Ignoring the rambunctious beast, he resumes playing with the smaller pups.
The dog jumps on him again. This time my son glares at it and shoves it away — hard. The dog yelps, then slinks back. Ears flattened, hackles raised, it circles him.
To get closer, in case I’m needed, I walk to the ocean side of the veranda, stand by one of the open cannon ports placed every five yards along the waist-high coral parapet that rings the deck. But I’ve little doubt Henri can handle this challenge. The boy’s been taught to cope with worse.
Henri knows to always keep his eyes on an attacker. He faces the beast, slowly revolves as it attempts to get behind him, allowing the dog no opportunity for surprise. Finally, it charges, knocking some of the smaller pups out of its way, snapping its jaws when it nears my son, then jumping back, lunging forward again.
“Back!” Henri yells. The dog freezes for an instant, then shoots forward, mouth open, fangs exposed. The boy steps back, puts up his left arm to guard his face just as the animal bites.
Its teeth sink into his forearm and Henri yowls once. Then the boy hisses — loud enough for me to hear from the veranda. The foolish beast ignores the warning, and refuses to let go.
Henri holds his right hand up and stares at it, his fingers narrowing and extending, his nails turning into sharp, curved claws in only a few moments. I nod, proud the boy could ignore the pain and the attack long enough to focus on what he must do to save himself. Like me, like his mother, like all of our kind, the boy is a shapechanger, a far more dangerous foe than the animal realizes.
Henri slashes out and this time the dog yelps. It howls as my son strikes again and again. The creature backs off, tail tucked in, blood flowing on the ground as it scurries into the underbrush.
“Good,” I mutter. It’s best that all these beasts understand that we are masters of this island. And it’s time my son learned they’ve been bred to be our watchdogs, not our cuddly pets.
Henri shoves the other dogs away from him, then turns and holds up his left arm so I can see the red teeth marks of the dog’s bite, the blood running down his arm. From the expression on his face, I’m not sure whether he’s showing me because he’s proud or because he needs my sympathy. “Poor you,” I mindspeak to him. “Do you want me to guide you, help you heal?”
My son shakes his head. “No, Papa,” he mindspeaks. “I’m too big for that now. I’m almost four. Look, Papa!”
He keeps his arm up so I can watch. Henri stares at the red puncture wounds on his forearm, frowns, knits his eyebrows and I grin at the concentration evident on his face. One day he’ll be able to heal an injury as minor as this with a moment’s thought.
The bleeding stops. The wounds turn from red, to pink, to normal flesh color, and Henri smiles again. “See?” he mindspeaks. “I told you I could.”
“You’re growing up, son,” I say, frowning at the concept. A year ago he would have taken refuge in my lap and moaned while I nudged his mind toward the thoughts that could ease his pain and heal his wound.
Ready to move on, Henri waves at me with a clenching and unclenching of his chubby right hand. I smile, wave and watch him go over the top of the dune to the beach on the other side. Then I turn and go back to my chores.
It makes me chuckle when I think how many people assume it’s easy to live on an island. How idyllic they imagine such a life to be. But on an island such as ours, life is anything but simple.
Sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and Miami’s Biscayne Bay, surrounded by salt water on all sides, our small island — Caya DelaSangre, as my family calls it, or Blood Key as it’s named on the charts — is in a constant state of erosion and decay. Wind and tide attack the shores relentlessly. Salt air penetrates everything.
As I weed, I mentally catalog all my chores. Besides working in the garden, maintaining Elizabeth’s grave and straightening out the cavernous interior of our coral house every day, I have to spend my time going from machine to machine. I lubricate and repair generators and motors, fight rust where it appears and recharge batteries. Other regular chores include painting, replacing rotted planks of wood, making sure the well pumps remain primed, keeping the reserve water in the cistern fresh and servicing the twin Yamaha outboards on the boat so they function as they should.
Keeping supplied presents its own difficulties. All materials have to be brought by boat from Miami, just over the horizon, to our west. Since I trust no one to visit but Arturo, I’ve taught only him the twists and turns of the narrow channel that leads to our harbor. He alone is responsible for bringing all of our supplies, including frozen meat, from the mainland.
Since Henri’s far too young to help, fresh food is entirely my responsibility. Our kind prefers fresh meat and whenever we feel the need for it, I have to go off on a hunt. Not that hunting is ever a hardship. It’s what my people do.
Just the thought of hunting fresh prey makes my stomach growl. I look up at the sun, frown when I see it hasn’t quite yet reached its apex. I sigh, swallowing saliva. If I could, I would go right now. But I’ll wait. I know the only safe time to hunt is at night, in the dark, after the world has turned quiet.
I decide to wait until evening before I tell Henri of my plans. Otherwise, the day will go too slowly for my son.
At dinner, I serve Henri only half his regular portion of rare steak, as I do every time before a hunt. I don’t want the boy to be too full to eat what I bring him. He looks at his plate, then at me. “Papa? Are you hunting tonight?” he says.
I nod, put my own much larger serving of warm, bloody meat on the table.
“Can I go too?”
“You know better,” I say. “Not until you’re older.”
“But I’m going to be four. ...”
“Older than that.”
“Not fair!” he says, folds his arms and pouts.
I smile at him. “When you’re bigger, we’ll hunt together. For now, eat your food. There will be more later, when I come back after you’re asleep.”
Henri, still pouting, looks away from his plate.
I ignore his momentary food strike and make a show of cutting and eating my meat. In only a few minutes the heavy aroma of the blood on his plate and my feeding in front of him makes him too hungry to resist eating any longer.
After Henri falls asleep, I go out on the veranda and walk over to its ocean side. In the darkness, a dog barks. Otherwise, only the waves rushing at the shore, the wind rustling through the trees break the silence of the night.
A southeast breeze, I think, normal for this time of year. My mind turns to Chloe, living on that island so far south of mine. There’s little chance the girl has come of age so soon. Still, I turn my face toward the southeast, sniff in the salt smell the wind carries. If Chloe has reached her maturity, her scent will surely be on the air. Thankfully, the breeze carries no hint of cinnamon and musk, the telltale aroma of a female of my kind in heat.
Grinning, I put my arms out, luxuriate in the caress of the wind. “It’s time,” I say out loud. I take off my shirt, my pants, my underwear, my socks and shoes, and stand naked on the oak deck of the veranda.
Flaring my nostrils, I breathe in the night air again, puffing my chest as it fills my lungs — the oxygen energizing my blood cells — my heart speeding its cont
ractions, hammering in my chest as it pumps great bursts of blood throughout my body. I look up to the dark sky, the gray clouds scudding overhead, the pinpoint sparkles of the stars, the dull glow of a half-moon. I belong up there, I think.
I will myself to change, groaning at the pleasure/pain of stretching skin, the sweet agony of growing bones. Once I was ashamed of what I was. Once I wished to live only as a human. But now I welcome my metamorphosis to my natural form. I draw in a deep breath of the salt-tinged night air and let out a slow growl.
“I am Peter DelaSangre, son of Don Henri DelaSangre,” I say into the night. My skin ripples, hardening, turning to dark green armored scales everywhere but my underbelly. Beige scales form there, double thick to protect me from any attacks from below. I grimace as my back swells, then splits, my wings emerging, growing, unfolding, my tail stretching out behind me.
My lips compress as my face narrows and elongates and my teeth lengthen and turn to fangs. My body stretches and thickens until I’m more than twice the size of my human form. My hands and feet reshape themselves into taloned claws and I groan at the pain and pleasure of it all.
Clasping and unclasping my claws, I stretch my wings to their full span — almost twice as wide as my height. I beat them once and then again, fanning air before me, switching my thick tail from side to side, stretching muscles that have rested too long — until every fiber of my being longs to fly.
With one bound I take to the air. The sky belongs to me. The night is my domain. I roar into the dark.
I pity those who have never experienced such a moment.
Each stroke of my wings takes me higher. As always before a hunt, I bank and circle Caya DelaSangre, looking down at the thin white lines of waves moving in the gloom, approaching my island’s shore — the white froth as they break against the pale shadow of the beach.
The rest of the island shows itself only as a black mass floating in a slightly less dark sea. Only the warm, yellow glow of the lights I left on in the great room on the third floor of the house gives evidence of the island’s habitation.
I spiral over my home, soaring higher, the air growing cold around me, the bright grid of the city lights of Coral Gables and Miami appearing, stretching inland to my west. Boats lights pierce the darkness of the ocean to my east. My stomach, emptied by the energy spent changing, growls and aches. Saliva floods my mouth.
Hungry as I am, I still have no desire to hunt near where I live. There’s no challenge in capturing any nearby prey. Humans mob the mainland just a few minutes’ flight away. Their boats crowd the water around my island. To take one of them would gain me only quick gratification and would risk that Henri and I might be discovered for what we are. Before any such easy prey tempts me, I turn toward the sea, flying over the fishing boats near shore, continuing past the craft plying the Gulf Stream.
Some nights I search over Bimini or Freeport, occasionally ranging as far as islands like Abaco, Eleuthera or Exuma. Other times I hunt over the farming regions of Cuba. I find there’s little fuss raised on those islands when poor fishermen or impoverished rural people disappear. Likewise, no one takes notice when I attack the dilapidated wooden boats that illegally bring Haitian aliens to our shores or the rafts bearing those poor Cubans risking their lives to escape the thug of Havana.
Tonight I fly south, following the path of the Florida Straits as it wends between Key West and Cuba. I angle west, and begin to search the waters beneath me after I pass Key West. I prefer this hunting area to any other. Any rafters who float south of the Florida Keys without being discovered have little chance of survival. Their rickety contraptions are soon captured by a current which whisks them into the Gulf of Mexico, away from the shipping channels, without any hope of reaching land before they starve or die of thirst.
I take no pleasure that my hunger dictates the death of other beings. It strikes me that, when I find such rafters floating to their inevitable demise, I’m at least bringing them the blessing of a quick death.
No more than thirty miles past the Dry Tortugas, I spot a flash of orange bobbing in the water. It disappears and I circle back, staring at the dark waters beneath me. The orange shows again and I spiral down toward it. Had the night been moonless, I doubt I would have noticed. As proud as I am of my night vision, I must admit, not even creatures like me can see in the darkest gloom.
But this evening provides no such challenge. The clouds have cleared in this area and the half-moon provides more than enough light to enable even those with normal vision to see some things.
Below me, a second flash of orange paint appears no more than six feet from the first. I continue my descent until I make out two half-submerged, orange, fifty-five-gallon drums lashed to a few wooden beams, the wood attached to a plywood deck which slants into the water. A sole man lies on the plywood, facedown, his head toward the drums, his hands grasping the rope which holds everything together, his feet trailing in the water.
Poor soul, I think, imagining the storm which swept away the other drums and drowned his companions. I drop to within a few feet of the water, skim over the waves as I approach the rafter. As close as he still is to the Keys, I doubt he’ll be too emaciated to take. If he is, I decide, I’ll perform a quick mercy killing and continue my hunt.
There were times in the past, I admit, that Father and I would pick up such a wasted creature and bring him home to heal and fatten in one of the six cells built beneath our house for that very purpose. But Father is long gone now and, ever since Elizabeth’s death, the thought of keeping any human prisoner makes me shudder.
I fly over the man, close enough that the wind from my passage ruffles his shirt, ripples the water around him. To my delight, he appears still healthy, even thick, a little running to fat.
“QUÉ?” he shouts as he turns over, rubs his eyes. The Cuban draws his knees up, scoots closer to the drums. Searches the water around him.
Circling above, I wonder what injustice caused him to risk his journey. Or was it just the desire for a better life? My stomach growls and I sigh. Whatever brought this man this far will never be known to me. All I can be sure of is that his voyage has been for nothing.
I fold my wings and dive, gathering speed as I hurtle toward the water, spreading my wings at the last moment so that I shoot forward toward the raft.
The Cuban sees me as I rush toward him. His eyes widen. He shouts, “ENDRIAGO!” an instant before I strike.
I grab him with my back claws, jerk him from the raft and cut through the back of his neck with one bite. His body goes limp in my grasp, his warm blood fills my mouth. Beating my wings, gaining altitude, I swallow, then roar into the night.
Tearing flesh from the carcass as I fly, mindful of leaving enough meat to share with my son, I mull over what the man had yelled. Endriago, a Spanish word for dragon.
That the man identified me for what I was in the few seconds before his death, in the half-lit gloom of the night, earns my admiration. Most of his kind merely scream.
Still, “dragon” is only a term that humans chose for us long ago. We call ourselves the People of the Blood. Part of me wishes the man could have known what kind of creature took his life. Not that it would have comforted him or changed anything about his demise. But at least he would have known his life wasn’t taken by some fairy-tale monster, that he didn’t die from the attack of some mindless beast.
I take another bite from my prey, savor the sweetness of the fresh meat. Henri will like this, I think, picturing how my son will rush to join me once I arrive home and place my kill on the veranda. We’ll feed together then, father and son, both in our natural forms, side by side.
Chloe comes to mind too. I wonder whether she’s flying this night over the rugged terrain near her home. I wish she were here, flying beside me. Soon, I promise myself. Henri’s birthday is only days away. We should be free to leave for Jamaica within weeks after that. Then, there’s only the final wait.
I sigh, wishing that was over too.
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2
“Papa! Wake up!”
Two small hands push against my back — once, twice. “Papa,” Henri says, “it’s today isn’t it? My birthday? I’m four now, right?” He pushes on my back again.
I groan, let Henri’s voice and his insistent prodding rouse me from sleep, take me away from the seductive comfort of unconsciousness. Opening my eyes just a little, as if my eyelids alone can keep me from fully awakening, I turn toward my son. “Yes,” I mutter, “you’re four.”
Henri leans his elbows on the bed, cradles his face in his hands and stares at me. “Then we’re going to shore today? You promised!”
Certainly I did, many times. Something I regret at this moment. I nod. Wondering what time it is, I open my eyes farther, and blink at the sunlight streaming through the cracks between the wooden slats of the bedroom’s window shutters. The narrow lines of brightness cut through whatever gloom remains from the night, leaving pockets of darkness only in the corners farthest from the windows.
Henri’s fourth birthday, I think. I shake my head, marveling at the rush of time. Then, as always on each of my son’s birthdays, I remember Elizabeth’s death, feel it all over again. How unjust that my son’s first day must always be linked to my wife’s last, that my joy must always be diluted with my sorrow. I close my eyes again.
“Papa!” Henri says.
“Okay ... okay.” I stretch, sit up, reach for my watch. Ten after six. I sigh. Ordinarily, Henri sleeps until I wake him. At worst, if he does wake by himself, it’s never before eight. But I can’t blame the boy for being excited today. He’s never set foot on the mainland. I’ve been promising him the adventure of it for months.
Henri comes to the dock a few minutes after the twin, two-hundred-horsepower Yamaha outboards on the twenty-seven-foot, Grady White cough to life. I grin when I sense his presence. No matter where he is on the island, no matter what adventure he’s in the midst of, the sound of the boat’s motors invariably draws him near.
Dragon Moon Page 2