The Dragon DelaSangre

Chapter 12

I love the way islands rise into view on the open water. My own island, Blood Key, lies out of sight of mainland Miami. Every time I leave Coconut Grove, I have to point the boat in the correct direction without any visual confirmation, the island only revealing itself to me as I travel across the bay, teasing me by first showing a few treetops as thin black smudges above the horizon-then slowly swelling up before me as I speed toward it.

Jamaica first shows itself as a dim glow on the horizon, late into the second night of my cruise. Though I know I may be too far offshore to reach her, I mindspeak, "Elizabeth!"

"Peter?" A different voice answers, faint but distinctly male.

I pause before I reply, wondering who, why-worried that something could have happened to her. "Yes," I say.

"This is Derek, Elizabeth's brother. I'm to meet you when you arrive.…"

"Is Elizabeth okay?"

"Oh," he says. "Of course… I thought you knew she can't."

"Can't what?"

"It's the damned tradition, you know. Bloody pain if you ask me. But Mum and Pa insist on the old ways. God knows I've argued with them. Told them a thing or two quite a few times-if you know what I mean-"

"Derek!" I interrupt, and sigh before I continue. "What tradition are you talking about?"

"Elizabeth thinks it's stupid too. She can't understand why you two can't talk or see each other until the feast. I told Pa, you'd already seen everything she has to offer, she's carrying your whelp after all, but he won't go against my mum." His chuckle reaches all the way from Jamaica. "Not that I blame him."

"Can you tell her I miss her?"

"Of course… She says she can't wait to be with you. "

I grin when I hear that.

"Peter?" Derek says. "How close are you?"

"I'm not quite sure. I think I'll make it to Falmouth sometime tomorrow afternoon."

"Do me a favor, old man. Could you push on a bit more? Come in at Oyster Bay. You can put up at Sparkling Waters Marina. That way I don't have to drive into Falmouth. I'd rather avoid the place for a little while."

I shrug and say, "Sure."

"You'll like the marina better anyway. The water's quite remarkable at night, phosphorescent you know. " He pauses but I don't have a sense he expects any comment from me. Rather, it seems, he's following his own train of thought. After a few more moments he continues. "Good, that settles it! I'll meet you at the dock the morning after tomorrow. I'll tell Mum to expect us before dark. "

Footsteps wake me as Derek Blood strides onto the wooden dock and paces the length of the boat, once, then twice before he hails me. "Peter!" he says. "This is your craft, isn't it?"

"Yes!" I call out, sitting up in bed, reaching for a pair of shorts. "I'll be with you in a minute!"

"Fine-looking boat you've got. Wouldn't mind having one like this myself… No hurry, old man. I'll wait for you on deck."

I find him sitting on a seat on the flybridge, his sneakered feet propped up on the console. Dressed in a striped polo shirt and white shorts, he looks like he's on his way to tennis. Derek flashes a wide smile when he sees me, makes no effort to hide his scrutiny. "Elizabeth described you very well," he says, stands and offers his hand.

It's like shaking hands with a vise. He's at least three inches taller than I am, muscular enough to strain his clothes to the point of bursting. I match the strength of his grip, returning his open stare.

Had I not been expecting him, had I not seen his telltale emerald-green eyes, I'd never guess he's Elizabeth's brother. Blonde-haired, sharp-nosed and thin-lipped, his skin is too white, too untouched by any color, other than a slight red flush on his cheeks, to think him related to her in any possible way.

He sees the confusion on my face and laughs. "Wait till you meet the rest of the family. Elizabeth changed a few years ago, decided she likes looking like a native. Chloe, our younger sister, did the same thing, but chose to be even darker. Mum and Pa, my younger brother, Philip, and I still prefer to look the way our ancestors did."

We both have to squint in the bright early morning sun and Derek looks at his gold Rolex watch and shrugs. "Sorry about the time, old man. I just wanted to make sure we could make it back to Morgan's Hole before dark. Sometimes the roads can get quite dicey."

Derek waits while I go to the marina's office and call Miami. I manage to catch Jeremy Tindall at home, just before he leaves for the office.

"For Christ's sake, Peter," he says. "How much longer do you plan to keep using my damn boat? Is it okay? Where the hell have you taken it?"

"Hello, Jeremy. I'm fine. Just in case you're curious," I say.

"And the boat?"

"The Grand Banks is fine too, not a scratch. Jeremy, listen to me. I need you to arrange some things."

"Like?" he says.

"I'm in Jamaica and I'm getting married."

"To a Jamaican?"

"Sort of," I say. "I need papers for her, citizenship, legal ID, social security, driving license-the works. And a Florida marriage certificate for us too."

Jeremy snaps, "Arturo handles those things."

"Arturo's busy. You know how to arrange it too. Don't screw with me on this, Jeremy. Elizabeth's very important to me."

His voice softens. "Of course, Peter, I'll be glad to help."

He asks for the address of the marina and promises to express a packet of forms for Elizabeth and me to fill out.

"We'll need a current picture of her," he reminds me.

"Will do," I say.

"I think you need to know, your friend Santos is still calling. I had to talk to him again after he became abusive with Emily. He said he's tired of waiting for you. He demanded permission to visit your island. Of course, I told him it was impossible. If he tried we would press charges against him…"

I sigh, wish the man would stop intruding into my life. "Tell him again, I'll see him when I get back. Tell Arturo-if Santos is stupid enough to go to the island-he has my permission to shoot him."

"Tell him yourself," Tindall says. "Arturo told me he wants you to call him on his cell phone. You tell him he can shoot the jerk. I hope Santos gives him the opportunity to do it."

"I hope he doesn't," I say. "I'd rather he just goes off, leaves me alone."

"I've talked to him and I have to say, there's not much chance of him going anywhere until he's sure there's no connection between you and his sister."

"Well, there is none."

"Santos is the one you have to convince, not me." Tindall chuckles. "I don't care what you did. I don't care what he thinks. The only thing I care about right now is my boat…"

"Stop worrying, Jeremy. I'll be giving it back to you soon enough."

"And that would be when?" Tindall asks.

"In a few weeks," I say. "If you get all of Elizabeth's paperwork done quickly enough."

Arturo wastes no time on pleasantries. As soon as he hears my voice, he says, "Would you believe one of the accountants tripped him up?"

"Santos?" I ask.

"No, Tindall." Arturo laughs. "I can't believe he could be this stupid."

"And?"

"Jerry Sokowitz brought me the figures on Caribbean Charm, our import company, the one that sells paddle fans and lights to all the big hardware chains."

"Sure, I remember that one. It's been growing nicely…"

"Not anymore. Starting in January, sales started to dive. They're off now over seventy percent. We're losing money hand over fist."

"What does the president say?"

"That's the thing. He quit in January, along with his top three salesmen. They took their customers with them."

"And Jeremy didn't do anything to stop them?"

Arturo laughs again. "Seeing that they went to work for an import company run by Tyler Tindall, his youngest son, I don't know why he would want to."

I sigh into the receiver. Excessive greed always confuses me. Jeremy Tindall already makes more money than most men dream of. Why would he risk diverting any of my business?

"What about Ian?" I ask, hoping somehow that Jeremy's older son, the man I'm grooming to eventually replace him, isn't involved.

"We've had Ian in D.C. at George Washington, taking a special course in tax law. The business is in Jeremy's wife's name and Tyler's. The way that family works, I think there's a good chance Ian knows nothing about it. If he did, they'd have to share with him."

"You know what to do," I say.

"I expect there will be an unexpected disaster," Arturo says. "I doubt the company will survive it."

"When the son is there."

"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 matched 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."