The Seadragon's Daughter (2 page)
Read The Seadragon's Daughter Online
Authors: Alan F. Troop
Acknowledgments
To Susan, my wife and my love, who has shown remarkable forbearance in sharing this writer’s life for the past sixteen years. To Rocky Marcus, a great friend, a good critic and the best creative writing teacher in North Florida. To fellow writer, Jim Hesketh, for your support and candid opinions. To Dave Kupferman for your computer expertise and to the Cuban contingent, Miriam Duque and Madeline Rosales for the Spanish help. To Jen Heddle, many thanks for believing in me and much luck in all you attempt. And to Levi Daniel Foster—welcome to the family.
1
My stomach growls as I circle over the Zapata Swamp. My flight has taken longer than I anticipated and been less productive. Ordinarily when I choose to hunt over Cuba, I have to range no further than the rural farm areas not too far inland of Varadero. But tonight I’ve spotted no prey—even with the aid of a full moon and a clear late-night sky.
If a sudden flash of light hadn’t drawn my attention, I never would have flown so deep into the island. Now I see only blackness beneath me. I glide in wide circles, peering into the dark, sniffing the air for any scent of man, my wings extended to their full thirty-two-foot span, my tail stretched out behind me.
Light slices through the dark again, a narrow beam far below me. I spiral down toward it, swallowing saliva, ignoring the ache of my empty stomach.
The man crouches by the edge of the water, a flashlight in one hand and a small trident-shaped spear—a frogging gig—in the other. As I pass over him he strikes with the gig and lifts a struggling bullfrog from the water. Its belly glistens bleached white in the flashlight’s glare for a moment before the light winks off.
I let out a low, satisfied growl. The man looks to be large and beefy and—most importantly—alone. Inhaling a deep breath of cool night air, I flap my wings and gain altitude before circling back.
Just as I reach attack position, the flashlight winks on again. I fold my wings and plummet, letting gravity rush me on, my eyes focused on the frog hunter, his gig in position to strike again. How fitting, I think, the hunter about to be taken by a superior hunter—one who doesn’t need to use a light to freeze his prey.
I flex my jaw in anticipation of the attack, hard enough so my fangs grind against each other and my jaw muscles ache from the effort. Near the ground I unfurl my wings, catch the air with them and level off, rocketing forward, the air buffeting my scaled skin, my mouth open, my claws ready.
I expect the man to look up, to discover just moments before his death what manner of beast will take his life. I wonder if he’ll scream, or try to run, or if he’ll hurl his gig at me in one last, futile gesture. I can almost taste the rich, thick flavor of his blood, the sweetness of his flesh.
Something nudges my right side. I take my eyes from the man, stare to the side and see nothing. A sigh follows and I whirl around to find only empty, dark sky. My attack momentarily forgotten, I become aware of deep, regular breaths and listen until I realize they come from me.
Consciousness comes slowly. First I sense the hard mattress beneath me, then my sleeping wife’s warmth at my right side. Chloe sighs again and shifts her body beside me. This time I recognize the movement and the sound for what they are and open my eyes.
Staring into the darkness, almost gasping to find myself in my human form, my heart still throbbing from the dream, I wait for another movement, for a break in her breathing, for any sign of wakefulness. But my young bride stays deep in her dreams.
I lie still and listen to the slow, steady rhythm of her breaths. How I envy her ability to sleep through the night. I stifle a sigh. Once sleep came easy for me too. Now even the slightest disturbance seems to wake me.
If my father, Don Henri DelaSangre, were alive he’d laugh at my restlessness. When I was growing up he often said to me,
“Life can be harsh, Peter—even for beings as powerful as us. Expect nothing in your life to be constant but change.”
“Life can be harsh, Peter—even for beings as powerful as us. Expect nothing in your life to be constant but change.”
In my youth I doubted those words. But over the years, both murder and betrayal have taught me their truth. I frown into the dark. All the more reason I shouldn’t have allowed myself to become so accustomed these past few years to a life of happiness and ease.
I let out a breath, try to clear my mind of thought. Closing my eyes, I match my breathing with Chloe’s, will each muscle in my body to relax. However, instead of letting sleep overtake me, I become more and more awake and more and more aware of the warmth of her naked flesh pressed against mine.
Finally I turn my head and glance at the clock. It reads 4:48. I wonder whether to go back to sleep or to make love to her or to simply get up and go outside to wait for the dawn.
My bride’s body twitches. She grasps and ungrasps her hands, a low growl breaking from her lips. Another growl follows and a third before she sighs and begins again to draw in one deep breath and then another. A hunting dream. I smile. It’s only fair that they overtake her too. After all, they roil my sleep any time too many days pass between hunts.
I sigh. This time too many months have passed.
Chloe’s movements have pushed down her covers and exposed her right breast. I stare at her dark skin, the darker circle of her nipple and consider cupping my hand over it. Sleep, after all, seems to be no longer a possibility for me this night.
However, I know if I wake Chloe, I’ll also miss an opportunity to go outside, to spend a few precious moments alone. I shake my head. To think that once I feared loneliness more than anything.
But more than three years have passed since Chloe became my bride and joined my son, Henri, and me on our small island, Caya DelaSangre. Over two years have gone by since our daughter, Elizabeth, came into the world, biting and clawing and mewling her resistance. Our three-story, coral stone house—once a large, empty building that I wandered through alone and lonely—now seems at times almost too full.
As usual, Chloe’s draped one of her naked legs across mine and one of her arms over my chest. I lift her leg, sidle out from under both limbs and ease out of bed. After throwing on a pair of briefs and a pair of cutoff jeans, I open the bedroom’s large oak exterior door and step out onto the veranda.
With dawn still almost an hour away, the dark still rules. I breathe deep, smell the salt-tinged freshness of the cool early-morning air, smile and close the door behind me.
Dew has already soaked the veranda’s oak deck, leaving it cold and treacherously slick for my bare feet. To avoid slipping, I walk slowly as I make my way to the ocean side of the veranda, finally stopping by a rectangular cutout in the waist-high coral parapet that encircles the veranda—one of the many cannon ports Father placed long ago for our defense.
The cannons have long since been stored away, along with Father’s other ancient armament, in four arms rooms, each located on a different side of the house. Leaning against the rough, ancient stone, I stare past the dark shadows of the grass and sea oat-topped dunes, over the pale contrast of the beach’s flat white sand, to the black surface of the ocean. Only thin white ribbons of foam show in the dark as the waves break and roll to shore. A gentle breeze blows over them, carrying with it the soft, wet thuds of the breakers surging against the beach.
A mile off shore, the Fowey Rocks lighthouse blinks through the gloom. I smile at its bright warning light and turn my face into the wind, letting it push against me. It reminds me of flying and I sigh.
The matching growls of twin diesel motors break the quiet of the early morning—their sounds loud enough to signal their closeness. Staring past the waves, I search until I spot the moving lights and the dark shape of a patrol boat cruising just a few hundred feet past the surf line. I curl my lip at it.
I understand the special circumstances that have brought them so close. They have every legal right to patrol here. Still, I am a DelaSangre. Like my father before me, I consider the waters near my island to be my property—every bit as much as the sand and stone of the island itself. I think of calling the office later to get my man, Arturo Gomez, or his associate, Ian Tindall, to arrange that no patrol dares to come so close again. But then I shake my head.
“Only the wise,”
Father always said,
“understand the limits of their powers.”
“Only the wise,”
Father always said,
“understand the limits of their powers.”
After the sun breaks free of the ocean and rises over the horizon, I come back inside, undress and slide into bed. I’ve barely warmed myself against Chloe before the alarm buzzes to life. She reaches for it with a bare brown arm, slaps it quiet, turns on her bedside lamp, yawns and nestles against me.
“I dreamed again,” she says.
I hug her and say, “Of hunting?”
Chloe shrugs. “What else?”
“I couldn’t sleep before,” I say. “I went outside. Those damn idiots had a patrol boat out at that hour—just yards from our island. They need to look someplace else. No one here has done any of the things that have driven them all so crazy. . . .”
“And no one has accused us of anything,” Chloe laughs. “They’re patrolling everywhere.”
“You can laugh all you want to. Yesterday when I was dropping Henri off at school, some guy snapped a picture of us. By the time I tied up the boat and got off he was gone. I asked the school about it. No one had any idea who it was.”
“It was probably just another parent. No one’s investigating us, Peter. Not that we wouldn’t deserve it. You know, you’re like the criminal who protests—way too loud—when he thinks people suspect him of the one crime he actually didn’t commit.” She pulls free of me, stands and waits, hands on hips, for me to get up too.
The lamplight makes my young wife’s milk-chocolate skin look like soft brown velvet. I make a show of staring at her, her brilliant emerald-green eyes and full lips, the roundness of her breasts, the dark triangle of tightly curled pubic hair nestled between her long brown legs. Pushing the covers aside, I motion for her to return to bed.
“Oh no,” she laughs. “Save it for the weekend. This is a school day. You don’t want your son to be late, do you?”
“I think you and I care far more about his being on time than he does,” I say.
Walking to Henri’s room, I watch where I place my feet. No matter how often Chloe and I go into a cleaning frenzy, toys, games, dolls and action figures seem to end up scattered almost everywhere. Both of us have stepped on, kicked, broken or tripped over more of the children’s things than we care to remember—even on the steps of the spiral, wooden staircase that runs up the center of the house to all three levels.
Only the bottom floor of the house manages to escape the children’s litter. It’s Chloe’s doing really. “I don’t want any children playing down there. It’s too dark and gloomy for my taste,” she said shortly after she came to live with us. “I know Henri’s been down there God knows how many times with you. But you’ve been lucky he hasn’t asked yet about your father’s holding cells. He’s too young. He doesn’t need to hear what they were used for.”
Just before I open Henri’s door, Elizabeth’s laugh signals that Chloe’s with her, teasing her awake. I smile at the sounds. When I grew up, barely any noise broke the quiet of the house. Now during waking hours the children’s laughs, screams, shouts, giggles and occasional wails fill the air. And Henri’s pet dog, Max, adopted from the pack of guard dogs I keep on the island, often adds to the ruckus with his loud barks and growls.
While neither the children’s mess nor their noise usually bother me, it does make me smile when I think how my father would have growled if he’d been subjected to any of it. But I grew up in a far different household than the one Chloe and I have decided to build for our children.
I often marvel at how ordinary my small family’s life now seems, how much our routines mirror the daily activities of those who live on the mainland. Still, I have no doubt how horrified any mainlander would be if they learned of our true nature.
2
“Peter, it happened again,” Chloe says, standing in the kitchen area, busy sawing with a serrated knife on a large slab of frozen beef when Henri and I finally come up to the great room for breakfast. Elizabeth, playing with a Raggedy Ann doll on the floor near her, smiles at me and gives her half-brother an even wider grin.
Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, Henri stands next to me, looking as if he were almost still asleep.
I shake my head. “That makes how many boats?”
“Fifteen boats found floating without anyone on board—all in the last twelve weeks. The
Herald
says that makes it twenty-six people either missing or dead—that they know of.” Chloe pauses cutting, points with her knife at the open wireless laptop sitting on the large oak table where we take our regular meals. “I left it on the article if you want to read it. They had it on the news too.”
Herald
says that makes it twenty-six people either missing or dead—that they know of.” Chloe pauses cutting, points with her knife at the open wireless laptop sitting on the large oak table where we take our regular meals. “I left it on the article if you want to read it. They had it on the news too.”
“No thanks,” I say, glancing at the computer, Chloe’s latest and currently favorite toy. “I still don’t like reading for very long on those things.”
Chloe flashes me a superior smile. I may be older, larger and stronger and I may be the master of all things mechanical in our household, but we both know she’s the one to turn to when a computer screen freezes or a new program needs to be installed.
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