Dragon DelaSangre

by Alan F. Troop

  "Sure," I tell her.

  The first true winds of winter arrive a few days before Christmas. For the first time since summer, the sun fails to warm the midday air. Outside, the wind beats against our closed windows, moans when it can't force its admittance. I take one look at the gray skies, the frenzied, frigid waves leaping on the bay and call the office, tell Emily to cancel my weekly meeting with Gomez and Tindall. Then I build a fire in the great room for Elizabeth and me. "This is Florida," I say. "It's not supposed to get this cold."

  Elizabeth grins, shakes her head at my discomfort. "The weatherman says it's only sixty degrees. At home it grows colder than this every night," she says. "You're acting as if a blizzard has attacked us when we both know it will be warm again in a few days."

  I leave her laughing in the great room while I go below to light a fire in our bedroom. Elizabeth mindspeaks to me a few minutes later. "He's here again."

  "Santos?" I say. "In this weather?"

  Elizabeth joins me at the window, watches with me as the sailboat fights its way through the water, one hull rising and lowering with each wind gust, the boat almost going airborne as it races from wave to wave. "He's crazy," I say.

  "They're both crazy," Elizabeth says and I nod when she points out Casey Morton standing, busy working the jib lines, helping keep the boat from flipping by leaning out away from the Hobie, supported only by her feet against the trampoline and a wire suspended from the top of the mast, connected to a canvas sling beneath her rear.

  "It's called being out on a trapeze," I say to Elizabeth, pointing to the other wire that supports Santos in the same way.

  In their full black wetsuits, they look to me like two shadows sailing. "No life jackets," I say, shaking my head. But I have to admire his control, the Hobie leaping and bucking, slicing the tops off waves as it overtakes them.

  Santos amazes me by turning and zigzagging north, battling the vicious north wind until he finally reaches the channel between my island and Wayward Key. The boat turns toward the channel, slows for a moment, wallows in the rough sea, then shoots forward. Santos and Morton lean back, away from the boat as the windward hull rises, Morton shifting position, her left foot slipping.

  She shouts, reaches for Santos, her body pivoting away from the Hobie, only her right foot remaining in contact with the trampoline. He grabs for her with his right hand, his fingertips touching hers.

  A gust of wind hits the sails and the boat speeds ahead, burying both bows into the wave to its front. The Hobie stops as if it's hit a wall, the stern rising, Morton flailing her arms as the momentum launches her in an arc controlled by the trapeze line attached to the mast. Santos follows, their forward momentum and the wind beneath the trampoline combining to somersault the boat, the man and the woman colliding as they wrap around the mast, their heads crashing together—mast wires tearing their skin, the boat settling over them, floating, bottom up.

  I breathe in deep, watch the disabled boat drift forward, and shake my head.

  "Aren't you going to save them?" Elizabeth asks.

  "No," I say. "They're under the boat. They'll drown before I can reach them." I turn, look at her. "Anyway, I thought you'd be relieved to see them out of the way."

  She shrugs, and continues to watch.

  A head emerges from the water. I stifle a celebratory shout. Instead, I calmly say to Elizabeth, "I think it's Santos."

  The man holds on to the capsized catamaran, fumbles with the lines attached to him and, once they're free, dives under the boat. A few moments later he surfaces, pulling Morton with him. He has to almost throw half her body onto the overturned boat before she tries to hold on, slipping a little as he undoes her lines, staying in place only with his help. When he lets go of her for a second, to get a better grip on the boat himself, she slips away, and sinks into the water.

  I almost moan when she does, hoping that Santos has enough sense to stay with the boat, thinking it better that one of them, at least, survives.

  Santos shouts at her, but the current whips Morton away. He pauses a moment before leaving the safety of the boat, pushes off when she surfaces, treading water, twenty feet from him.

  Neither has a life jacket and I know the current will carry them into the ocean within minutes. Do I have enough time to rescue them? I look at Elizabeth, try to calculate how angry a rescue attempt would make her.

  "I think you should save them," she says. I stare at her, my mouth open until I regain my voice. "Why?" I ask, not about to admit my own desires in this. "Go now! Bring them back here. I'll explain later."

  The Yamahas thunder to life the moment I turn the ignition key on the Grady White. I throw off the dock lines and speed out the harbor, smashing into waves as soon as I leave the island's protection. The cold wind lashes me, salt spray soaks my clothes as I negotiate the channel, twisting and turning, the boat battering its way through the swells.

  "Elizabeth!" I mindspeak when I reach the open bay and turn north. "Can you still see them?"

  "He reached her. …" she says. "He's been trying to swim holding her. Their boat floated past him a minute or two ago… He's trying to catch up to it, but I think it's moving too fast."

  I push the throttles forward, fight the wheel as the boat takes a glancing blow from one roller, then goes airborne over another. "How far are they from the ocean?" The Grady White leans on one side as I turn into the Wayward channel, salt spray coating the windshield, turning it opaque, nothing in view around me but churning water.

  "Not far at all."

  "Where are they?" I cut back on the gas, slow the boat, and search the waters in front of me.

  "To your right… about fifty yards. Look toward the corner of our island, just offshore."

  I turn the boat in the direction Elizabeth says, stare at the waves, catch a glimpse of a black wetsuit, a flash of yellow hair. "I see them!" I say, keeping my eyes on them, speeding up, going past them, then returning, so the current will bring them to me, looking for a way to rescue Santos and his woman without the boat crashing over them.

  Santos backstrokes with one arm while he holds the girl with the other. He doesn't look up until I reach beside him and put the boat in neutral. "Take Casey first!" he says, making the girl raise her left arm. I reach for her just as a swell lifts us, and carries her out of reach. We come together after it passes, the boat almost drifting over the floating couple. Before another swell overtakes us, I bend over the side of the boat, grab her by her wrist and yank her out of the water.

  She yowls at the sudden shock of having her entire body weight suspended by one arm. I pull her in, ignoring her groan when her body accidentally strikes the side of the boat, dropping her on the cockpit floor where she collapses, gasping, coughing, retching. Another swell lifts the boat and I rush to the side looking for Santos. Seeing nothing, I race back to the wheel, reach for the throttle.

  "NO!" Elizabeth mindspeaks. "He's at your stern."

  I find Santos clinging to the bottom of one of the outboard motors, seemingly oblivious to the idling engine's grumble, vibration and exhaust—trying to gain enough purchase to climb into the boat. Unaware of my surveillance, he struggles on, maintaining his grip around the motor shaft with one arm while he tries to grab the cowling with the other, the boat smashing up and down, his body colliding again and again with the still propeller.

  "Not a very smart place to put yourself," I say.

  Santos looks up. "I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to put the motors in gear."

  "It wouldn't have been a very pretty sight if you were wrong." I extend my arm, help him clamber over the stern. He drops to the floor next to Morton, holds her in his arms.

  "She'll be fine," Santos says. As much for her benefit as mine, I think.

  I throw the motors in gear and concentrate on turning the Grady White, working my way back to the safety of my harbor.

  Santos feels us turning, and says, "Wait! What about my Hobie?"

  "It's already out there." I tilt my
head toward the ocean. "It will probably drift to shore, somewhere up the coast, in a few days."

  "No." Santos stands, steadies himself against the back of my chair and looks out to sea. "Look, I appreciate your help. God knows I didn't expect it. But we don't need you to bring us all the way back to shore. If you can take us to my boat and help me right it, I'm sure I can get us home safely."

  I shake my head. "It's just a boat," I say. "Anyway, don't worry—I'm not taking you to shore, I'm bringing you to my island."

  Elizabeth meets us at the dock, three, large white-cotton bath towels in her arms. She waits while Santos and I help Casey Morton out of the boat, then hands towels to both of us. She unfolds the third one and stares at the woman—Morton shivering, barely able to stand. "You poor dear," Elizabeth says, shaking her head at Morton's blue lips, the purple bruise on the woman's forehead and the numerous cuts and tears to her wetsuit. "We'll get you inside and warm right away."

  I raise my eyebrows at my bride's newfound solicitude, watch as she tenderly wraps the towel around the woman. "Elizabeth," I mindspeak. "You wanted me to save them. I did. Now what!"

  She glares at me, puts one arm around Morton's waist and guides her toward the house. "Come," she says over her shoulder. "Let's get all of you by the fire."

  After the wind and cold and spray on the water, the warmth in the great room borders on oppressive. Still, I sink to a seat not far from the fire and sigh, delighted to let the heat overwhelm me. Elizabeth guides Santos and the woman even closer, clucking over their wounds. Casey Morton ignores her, stands by the fire, shivering, her eyes glazed, her arms folded around herself. Santos wraps his towel around her, holds her and repeats, "Don't worry, baby. You're okay now."

  "You'll both feel better once we get you some dry clothes," Elizabeth says. "And some warm food inside you. Peter, would you go downstairs to the freezer and bring up some steaks?"

  "Aren't we being a little too solicitous?" I mindspeak.

  Elizabeth flashes me a false smile. "Humor me,"

  I nod, head for the door. As I leave the room, my bride turns her attention back to our guests. "Oh, where's my hospitality? After all that time in the water… you must be dying to get the taste of saltwater out of your mouths."

  When I return a few minutes later, four frozen steaks in my hands, I find all three of them sitting at the oak dining table, a blue ceramic pitcher before them, Santos and Morton sipping from almost empty, large crystal mugs. I eye the pitcher. "Elizabeth, the Dragon's Tear wine?" I mindspeak. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "It's done," she says, then turns to them. "Finish the rest. You'll feel better."

  Casey Morton upends her mug and drains it. Santos sniffs at his, stares at the clear liquid. "It tastes a little greasy," he says.

  Elizabeth shrugs. "I'm sure it's not what you're used to. We live on an island. Our water comes from a cistern."

  He nods and drinks the remainder of the liquid in his mug.

  Elizabeth smiles, motions for me to sit down next to her.

  Santos looks around the room. "I have to tell you, I don't understand why you objected to my coming out here. There wasn't anything in the harbor. I haven't seen anything suspicious in the house—" He smiles. "I mean it's odd in here. I don't think I'd like to live the way you do… but I don't know what you were trying to hide. And I got to give it to you—if you wanted Casey and me out of the way, you certainly could've just sat on your hands and watched us drift out to sea… Maybe the note was wrong."

  "Note?" I say.

  Santos shrugs, looks at the floor. "I guess I'm trying to apologize to you both…"

  Casey Morton's legs give way. She slumps to the floor, in a sitting position, her eyes open. "Casey!" Santos says, kneeling next to her. She nods, staring into space.

  He turns, glares at me, says, "What the hell?" then topples to his side.

  I stare at him and the woman, wait for them to move, to make a sound, but neither one does. "Now what?" I ask Elizabeth.

  She smiles, snuggles close to me. "Now we keep them."

  Shaking my head, I move a few inches away from her. I think how much easier it would have been to let them float to their deaths, and wish my bride had consulted me before she acted. "Keep them? For what?"

  "For the child," she says. She takes my hand, lays it on her stomach. "After I deliver, your son and I will both need fresh meat. These two were going to die anyway. We can keep them in the cells below. This way we'll have plenty of time to fatten the woman. We can use her and the man as servants until my time comes."

  "That's months and months away." I stare at her, realize how much rounder her stomach's become, remember how much her breasts have swelled, her nipples darkened and thickened. "You won't be ready until May," I say, trying to reassure myself with how much more time we have before our responsibilities change.

  "Until then I want someone to help me in the garden. …"

  "I could do that."

  "As if you don't have enough to do," she says. "I don't need you to do any more." Elizabeth stares at Santos and Morton slumped on the floor in front of the fire, like two mannequins abandoned by a careless window dresser. She grins. "We have them now for that."

  * * *

  Chapter 23

  « ^ »

  Father told me that when he built this house, he took pains to make sure that sounds traveled very little. "Especially from the cells on the bottom floor," he said. "I found I always lost my patience with the noisy ones. There were times, I have to admit, that I dispatched some of them more quickly just so I could have some peace and quiet. You can't imagine how dreary it can be to have to listen to hours and hours of human tears and whining."

  Thanks to Father's foresight and the thick stone cell walls his masons built, Elizabeth and I both sleep late the next morning, undisturbed by any noise generated on the floor below us. As usual, I wake first. Leaving my pregnant bride still lost in her dreams, I stop outside our bed chamber, near the spiral staircase, when a few muffled sounds drift up from the cells.

  Glad to know the effects of the Dragon's Tear wine have abated, curious to see the condition of our guests, I descend the stairs—the muted noises growing louder, taking form. Casey Morton sobbing and groaning.

  When I near the bottom, she stops. I stand in the shadows, out of view of the cells, and listen to the rustle of bodies moving, the metallic clinking of chains. Jorge Santos murmuring in the darkness, "Casey, honey, relax… We'll get through this."

  She shrieks instead, loud enough to make me wince, the scream fading only as she runs out of air. Then she begins to moan again, ignoring Santos's assurances, her cries building in volume. Before she reaches another crescendo, I flip the wall switch, turning on all the ceiling fixtures at once—their bright lights erasing all the shadows, shining through the iron-barred doors of each cell. Casey throws one manacled hand over her eyes to block the glare, cowers on her cot and yowls.

  I step into my captives' line of sight. Jorge Santos, still in his wetsuit, his left forehead covered by a purple welt from his accident the day before, sits on his bed, blinks from the light as he stares at me. Iron chains attached to an iron ring around his neck and iron manacles around each wrist and each ankle limit his range of motion to only a few feet on either side of his bed. He makes no effort to fight against his shackles. Not so Casey Morton in the cell next to him, separated from Santos by a two-foot-thick stone wall and similarly restrained. She jumps from her bed, tries to move as far from me as she can, tugging and yanking on her chains to no effect.

  Already the manacles have rubbed her wrists red, almost raw. Before she hurts herself further, I yell, "Stop!"

  Casey freezes, staring at me, gasping air like a frantic animal, her blond hair tangled and spiked, her bruises and cuts from the day before covering her face in an irregular pattern of welts and scabs. Blood has caked on the side of her wet-suit where a gash in the black material offers a glimpse of the white skin and the dark red wounds beneath.<
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  Fear, I decide, will do more to still her than any soothing talk. I almost growl my words. "Casey, I keep a pack of wild dogs outside. Do you remember seeing them chase your boat when you and Jorge sailed close to the island?"

  She nods.

  "If you don't quiet down, I'm going to have to put a few of them in the cell with you. Do you understand?"

  She nods again, looks at the floor.

  I move on, stand in front of Jorge's cell. "I think your friend will be quiet for a while," I say.

  "You're a prince," Santos says, his tone acid. He examines his chains. "Is this what you did with Maria? You drugged her and held her here until you killed her?"

  "No." I fight the temptation to explain how I feel about his sister's death, to dismiss it as an accident. "I never drugged Maria. I never had her down here."

  "Maybe…" Santos shrugs. "At this point I guess there's no reason for you to lie." He locks eyes with me. "But I know you know what happened to her."

  His eyes possess the same shape, the same color as Maria's. I find he reminds me too much of her. It irritates me that I still care about his sister's death, and it bothers me that Elizabeth has engineered events in a way that forces me to be reminded of her constantly. Better, I think, that he and the woman had died. I look away.

  Santos irritates me more by adopting a smug expression, almost a smirk, as if he's won a point in a contest of wills. "I notice that you didn't deny that you killed her," he says.

  Sighing, I shake my head. "No, I didn't deny it. I didn't say I did it either. I don't think discussing Maria now serves either of us very well…" I let my voice deepen, turn menacing. It's time, I think, to remind him his fate depends on my good will. "It certainly doesn't serve you."

  "Maybe not," Santos says, refusing to be intimidated. "But it's hard to ignore that your sweet, young wife drugged my girlfriend and me. And"—he holds up his wrists to show off his chains—"I do have a problem with being locked up and chained to my bed." Santos pauses, looks as if he's considering something, then nods his head. "As a matter of fact, I have to admit, I've already decided. I'm going to have to kill you both."