Dragon DelaSangre

by Alan F. Troop

  "Of course… But you know Jeremy will be furious."

  "What he should be is scared."

  "I believe he will be that too," Arturo says, then listens as I tell him what to do if Santos dares to come to my island.

  My mind's still on Tindall, on Maria and Jorge Santos, when Derek and I leave the marina and start our drive inland. I hope Arturo takes care of Jeremy's son before I return. I want there to be time for it all to sink into his consciousness, time for him to drop his anger and accept the fate he has brought upon himself.

  As far as Santos, I thank the fates that I disposed of the Chris Craft already. I go over the events in my mind, make sure again that there's nothing left to link me to Maria.

  Derek takes a cue from my silence and says nothing until we pass through the small coastal town of Rock and turn off the paved coastal highway onto a lesser road heading into the interior. His white Land Rover hardly slows on the new surface, handles the rising terrain and loose graveled road as if it were cruising a city street. "This is the easy part," he says.

  I move with the bump and sway of the vehicle, watch the countryside, the occasional weather-beaten, unpainted, tin-roofed, wooden house or store—dogs and goats wandering nearby, rusted-out cars and washing machines in front or on the side.

  Derek points out items of interest, a green-breasted doctor bird, the bright orange flowers of an enormous African Tulip tree. He's left the windows down and the air conditioning off, allowing the hot morning air to rush around us, surround us with the lush aromas of the foliage we pass.

  Fortunately I've followed his lead and dressed in shorts and a polo shirt. With the day's heat building outside, I'm glad of it.

  I hadn't been sure what other clothes to bring, for the evening, for the feast and, when questioned, Derek offered no help. "Wear whatever you want," he said, shrugging. "Feasting has nothing to do with how you dress."

  Just in case, I've brought along a sports coat, a dress shirt and long pants. Though from Derek's indulgent grin when he saw me carrying them, I assume they won't be needed.

  I adjust my shirt collar, pat the right pocket of my shorts, make sure the gold, four-leaf clover necklace I've brought for Elizabeth remains secure where I placed it. Derek continues narrating our journey and I wonder if he's unaware of my nervousness or just politely ignoring it.

  Not that he's said a word to help me be at peace. "Derek?" I ask him. "What should I expect tonight, at the feast? I'd like to make sure I don't make a fool of myself."

  He laughs, points ahead and says, "Almost to Clarks Town, get ready to turn—"

  "About the feast," I say and, without slowing at all, he swerves the Land Rover to the right, onto a road perpendicular to ours. The momentum all but crushes me against the passenger door.

  He guffaws as I regain my position. "You can't say, old man, I didn't warn you."

  The new road, now before us, consists mostly of tire ruts and pot holes and we bump and lurch along it, slowing as the incline grows steeper and the trees and the bushes grow closer. When the car's motor starts to sound labored, Derek stops, throws the Land Rover into four-wheel drive and proceeds forward.

  We break free of the greenery surrounding us and get a quick glimpse of the egg-top-shaped hills of Cockpit Country, the deep cupped holes surrounding them, before the green blanket of the countryside closes in on us again.

  "Believe me," Derek says, "if I could, I'd tell you all about tonight. But Mum and Pa were quite explicit. They warned me, there's a tradition to be upheld and if I open my mouth about it… They think I talk too much anyway. If I tell you anything, they'll restrict me to Morgan's Hole for a year."

  He looks at me. "And I wouldn't like that. You should understand. You're a man. You know what it's like to be without a woman of your kind. All we can do is turn to humans." Derek grins. "That's why I wanted to avoid Falmouth. I mucked up a bit with one of the local women, left a tad of a mess behind me. You know how you get hungry afterward and there's a live meal, ready for you, right in your arms…" He pauses and shrugs.

  I look away, study the passing trees and bushes, ignore the drone of his words as he goes on about his weekly trips to the coast to find women, sounding more like the world's oldest teenager than a grown male of the blood. Why, I wonder, doesn't he go off on his own, try to find a woman of his own kind?

  The greenery clears again and I absentmindedly look down at the ground alongside the road and gasp.

  "Welcome to Cockpit Country," Derek says and guffaws. There's a sheer, five-hundred-foot drop just twelve inches from the left side of the Land Rover.

  "The ground's all limestone out here," he explains. "Eroded and collapsed by centuries of rain—sinkholes and hills, caverns and caves—all of it camouflaged by trees, waist-high grass and bushes. Wait till we get to the bad road!" He brays laughter again.

  My ears pop, the air grows cooler as we climb, our angle so steep at one point that most of what I see out of the front window is blue sky. Then we descend again. My ears pop once more and Derek says, "Barbecue Bottom." We pass a small group of wood shacks, some Jamaican men on the porches, their carefully tilled fields nearby.

  They make a point of looking away from us. "Real friendly," I say.

  "Don't take it personal, sport," Derek says. "You're with me and I'm not very well liked around this area."

  "Oh?"

  "These are superstitious people. They believe in all types of evil spirits and odd ghosts. They're most afraid of duppies, night spirits. They think such beings reside deep in Cockpit Country." He smiles. "It's well known around here, I come from that area…"

  "And people do disappear in the night around here, don't they?" I say.

  Derek laughs, then says, "All the time."

  A few miles farther, Derek stops the car, leans back and smiles at me. "Now the real journey begins."

  I look around for any sign another road might exist, then groan when Derek puts the Land Rover in gear and drives off the road and down the shallow sloped side of a bowl-shaped sinkhole. A canopy of green closes over us. Branches and tall grass slap the sides of the car.

  "If you look carefully, you can see the footpath," Derek says, slaloming the car around trees, boulders, his eyes fixed before him, a grin stretched across his face. "The Maroons made it centuries ago. You should see me doing this in the dark."

  No amount of staring enables me to see the path he's mentioned and pointed to. I shrug and decide I've no choice but to trust in his abilities.

  At the bottom, we skirt around a small lake, then ascend the other side. I grow used to the constant climb and fall of our travel, the jolts and lurches we make as we traverse each successive valley, the sheer drops we just avoid every few miles, and I turn my mind back to Elizabeth.

  "Why," I ask Derek, "can't Elizabeth and Chloe leave Cockpit Country? You certainly seem free to come and go as you please."

  He shakes his head, downshifts and guides the Land Rover around another obstacle. "Elizabeth said you had an outstanding lack of knowledge about our ways… With us, men are not at risk, women are."

  "Elizabeth can certainly take care of herself…"

  "Not when she's in heat. Then she belongs to the first male who takes her. You should know that."

  "I do," I say. "But what has that to do with leaving Cockpit Country, visiting the coast?"

  "You saw how hard it was to find a female in heat. God knows, I've been waiting to find one too. Longer than you, I think… if Elizabeth's right about your age." Derek sighs. "And you were fortunate to have won the fight for her. So if you knew where an immature female was, wouldn't it be tempting to take her and hold her until she reaches her first oestrus—without any further search, without any risk or challenge—after which she'd be yours for life?"

  I nod.

  "In the old days such kidnappings were common. But no proud female wants a mate who wins her that way. No parents worth their name would want to see their young daughters taken before their time and m
atched for life with a male too impatient to wait for her, too lazy to search for her and too cowardly to fight for her.

  "That's why we keep our young women close to home," he continues. "The men, they're another matter… no one worries about the men."

  Derek states the last few words with such venom that I stare at him. "Why do you stay?" I say. "Why not leave Jamaica, search for a bride?"

  "My father won't allow it." He barks out a laugh.

  I look at the size of him. "How can he stop you?"

  "He's killed two sons before me, for disobeying his wishes. Pa prefers that I deal with the outside world for him, bring back whatever riches I can find to add to his coffers."

  He looks at me, as if he wants me to think well of his family. "Pa can be difficult, but he's fair. He's promised, I can leave when I pass one hundred. By then my brother will be old enough and experienced enough to take over."

  We break out of the greenery once more, crossing a wide trail that Derek tells me leads from the Windsor Caves, six miles below us, to the town of Troy, four miles above. "Bloody damn tourists walk this trail all the time," he mutters, jams on the accelerator and speeds us past it.

  Derek stops the Land Rover a few miles later, in a clearing, on a ledge overlooking a wide, deep sinkhole. "Ready to stretch your legs, old man?" he asks as he steps out.

  I nod, throw open my door and get out, arch my back as I study the rugged terrain below and above us. "Certainly looks different when you're driving through it rather than flying over it."

  "If we were flying, we'd have been home long before this," he says.

  "How much longer going this way?"

  He stares up at the sun, studies the hills around us. "We're about halfway." Derek goes to the car, releases the catches on a steel, six-gallon jerry jug, holds it in the air and pours water into his mouth. Afterward, he hands it to me.

  As I do the same, he asks, "How was it? The scent… I mean, her scent, old man. What was it like? What did it do to you?"

  A blush burns its way onto my face. "My god," I say. "I smelled it all the way up in Miami. You had to smell it yourself, here."

  "You don't get it, old man." Derek shakes his head, goes about the task of replenishing the gas tank from some of the other jerry jugs the car carries. "Of course I smelled it. The air reeked of it. But it couldn't affect me. A family member's scent can't work on close relatives." He shakes his head again." That would be insane. Didn't your parents teach you anything?"

  Derek moans when I tell him about the aphrodisiacal qualities of the aroma, laughs as I describe how out of control it made me. "One day," he says as he gets back in the Land Rover, "I'll leave this bloody small island and find a woman of my own."

  "I'm sure you will," I say, getting in too, knowing how hard that task will be, more grateful man ever to have found and won Elizabeth.

  The shadows have lengthened, the sun has descended in the western sky by the time we finally come through the narrow pass that leads to Morgan's Hole. The Land Rover skids to a stop next to a small tower of stones piled by the side of the trail, about a half-mile from the house. A similar pile marks the trail only twelve feet ahead of us. "What?" I ask.

  Derek waves off my question, leans out the window and whistles a sharp loud blast. Then he drums on the steering wheel and waits until seven Jamaican men run up carrying long, thick wooden planks.

  An older Jamaican, the obvious leader of the men, carefully studies both piles of stones, the placement of the car. Then he motions where the men should lay the planks down. At no time do any of them step any closer than the farthest pile of stones.

  Derek watches them. Drives forward as soon as the men secure the planks. He stops just past the pile of stones, waits while the men retrieve the planks and trot off toward the house.

  Close up I can see the ragged condition of their clothes, the steel rings around their necks, wrists and ankles.

  "Slaves?" I ask.

  He grins. "Why not?"

  I am their guest, I think. Who am I to insist it's okay to eat them, but not to profit from their labor? I choose only to say, "Father said they're more trouble than they're worth, always plotting to revolt or run away."

  "Come," Derek says. He gets out of the Land Rover, walks to the pile of stones behind it, waits until I join him.

  "There's a narrow chasm that runs the width of the valley right here." Derek holds out his hand, motions for me to clasp it with mine. "Take a step forward," he says.

  I do and the ground groans and crackles beneath me.

  Derek yanks me back just before it collapses. "The ground's barely thicker than an eggshell here, with a thousand-foot drop beneath it." He tilts his head in the direction the Jamaicans took. "They know that. They know there are hundreds more pitfalls like this all around us."

  He whistles a different note, lower, more challenging and somewhere in the distance behind us, the howls of a dog pack answer him. "They know the dogs are out there too." Derek nods. "They'll stay put. They always do."

  We pass well-tended fields, pastures packed with cattle, sheep and goats, tidy rows of wood shacks for the workers, carefully maintained stables and paddocks for the family's horses.

  Derek parks in the shade of one of the towering silk cotton-wood trees, in the dirt drive in front of the house. Another Land Rover, a beige one, sits under another equally immense silk cotton wood on the other side of the drive. "My spare," he says, tilting his head toward the car.

  He honks his horn three times to alert his family to our arrival, then steps out of the Land Rover.

  I look at the wide stone steps leading up to their veranda, and realize that this house measures easily twice the size of mine.

  "Come on, Peter, you lucky dog!" Derek says, motioning for me to follow him. "The family's waiting for you inside. It wouldn't do to keep Pa and Mum waiting too long you know, old man."

  "Coming," I say, breathing deep, forcing myself to move, patting my pocket, making sure the necklace still remains in place, feeling foolish, like a schoolboy before his first date.

  "I envy you," Derek says, putting his arm around my neck, whispering as if we had conspired to bring about this evening. "The feast, Peter! If only you had an inkling of what's in store for you."

  He laughs at the confusion he sees in my eyes, and says, "Come old man! Pa and Mum grow far too impatient far too quickly."

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  « ^ »

  Derek leads the way up the steps to the veranda, rushing in front of me so I have to half run to keep up with him. "I'm always glad to get home," he says over his shoulder. "Too many humans out there. Bloody fools. Things make more sense here."

  On the veranda, he stops in front of two massive wooden doors, throws them open and motions for me to enter first. I pause, look into the dim interior, take a deep breath, smell the mustiness inside, try to quiet and slow the thumping of my heart. "Come on, old man." Derek smiles. "It's just my family in there. Chances are, you'll survive meeting them. They might even like you."

  "Chances are," I repeat, walking forward, not at all sure of Derek's assessment.

  Elizabeth's family stands at the foot of a wide spiral staircase, the room lit only by the diffuse light filtering down from the great room, three stories above, and a series of large, circular iron chandeliers, each one holding at least three dozen burning candles—each fixture hanging from long metal chains anchored to the ceiling's wooden rafters.

  The Bloods stare at us as we enter. I stare back, try to adjust my eyes to the room's irregular illumination, the dim light and half-shadows that obscure the family's features and make their pale visages look almost ghostlike. Elizabeth's father, mother and little brother all mirror Derek's pasty complexion and sharp, thin-lipped features. Only Chloe's fine full lips, her rounded Jamaican features and the mahogany hue of her brown skin—contrasted with the white linen shift she wears—allow her to survive the pallor the wan light inflicts on the others.

 
; Elizabeth's parents show no expression, make no movement, their youngest children frozen in place beside them—Chloe next to her mother, Philip alongside his father.

  My smile seems fixed on my face. I wonder if I should look as solemn as they, wonder if I could.

  Derek introduces us. "My father, Charles Blood," he says. "His wife, Samantha." Each one nods as Derek says their name. Chloe, alone, returns my smile.

  Elizabeth's father, tall enough to tower over all of us, thicker than Derek, but not appearing much older, dressed in a black, three-piece, Victorian suit, tugs at the collar of his shirt, and fiddles with the buttons below it. "Bloody stupid thing to walk around weighed down with all this cloth," he announces, and turns to his wife. "Look at them. They're dressed for comfort."

  Philip, hardly more than eight, but obviously his father's son, fidgets with his suit too, nods agreement with his father.

  Equally formal in an elegant, flowing white gown and equally youthful in appearance, Samantha Blood puts her hand on her husband's arm and says, "Charles, you promised…" She looks at me. "You'll have to excuse my husband. We rarely have company."

  Charles Blood shakes his head, steps forward and extends his hand. "You needn't excuse me at all." He squeezes my hand, his grip tighter than Derek's. "You just have to endure me."

  He locks eyes with me. For all the warmth that shows in his eyes, they could be true emeralds, cold and hard. I stare back without blinking, my hand held captive by his. "You're related to that old scoundrel, Captain Henry Angry?" he asks.

  I'm well aware of the anglicization of my family name and like it no more than Father did. He told me, in the old days the English had called our island Angry Key just as they pronounced Caya Oeste as Key West—even though the Spanish words translated as Bone Key.

  "Don Henri DelaSangre was my father," I say. "When he was alive, no one dared call him by any other name."

  Charles barks out a laugh, slaps my back. "No offense intended, son. My father, Captain Jack Blood, sailed with him. The captain told me many stories… Made me wish I'd been born in those times when our people could do as we wished."