The Dragon DelaSangre

Chapter 16

Lightning or thunder or Elizabeth's laughter-I'm not sure which-awakens me just before another dawn. I sit up, still in my natural state, the remnants of our kill-a young, attractive couple who maintained a small farm on the Cuban coast-lying nearby. Rain slashes across the deck, soaks me. The wind chills me as waves rush at us and the bow rises, then crashes down. The stern does the same, the props whining when they break free of the water, and I hear Elizabeth laugh again.

A lightning bolt streaks across the sky, its momentary brilliance freezing a snapshot of the frenzied sea leaping all around us and illuminating the wet, naked, human form of my bride at the wheel of the ship.

"Elizabeth?" I mindspeak.

"When the storm woke me, I turned off the autopilot and took the helm." She adjusts the wheel a quarter turn to the left, to keep the bow facing the waves. "I've never seen anything like this. Isn't it wonderful?"

The Grand Banks shudders, almost stops as a massive wave crashes over its bow. "You can go below. Use the lower wheel, in the cabin," I say.

" Why would I want to ? "

I shrug, throw the carcasses off the boat and revert to human form too. As soon as I do, I start to shiver. Elizabeth hardly notices when I approach and kiss her wet, cold cheek.

"I'm going below to get some foul-weather gear. Do you want me to bring you any?"

She shakes her head, laughs and whoops as we crash through another roller.

Below, inside the cabin, the pitching and rolling seem even more intense. I have to concentrate on maintaining my balance as I dry off and pull on a sweatshirt and jeans. I try to think how many days it's been since I was dressed, and give up the attempt after a few moments.

The lower wheel turns, the boat changes position and I picture Elizabeth, naked and laughing, at the wheel above. I grin and shake my head. I've never met anyone as free as my bride. I'm amazed how seductive her wildness has been. My memories of our voyage from Jamaica almost frighten me-that I could succumb to such a careless, untamed life.

I think of Elizabeth's question the night before. "When you met me, you thought you were going to teach me more about how to live as a human, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, I think you didn't expect one thing." She chuckled.

"Which was?"

"That maybe, I'd teach you more about how to be a dragon instead."

A massive jolt knocks me off my feet, throws me across the cabin. The boat wallows and turns. The lower wheel spins freely. "Peter!" Elizabeth mindspeaks. I sense at once she's no longer on the boat. "Peter!" she calls and I feel her drifting farther behind me each moment that passes.

I stand, rush for the wheel, reach it just as another breaker hits the Grand Banks on its beam, the boat half rolling on its side before it rights. "Elizabeth, are you hurt? " I ask as I tug on the wheel, steer the boat, bow first, into the waves.

"No… I don't think so," she says. "I'm not sure how any of it happened. The waves are huge. One swept me off the fly bridge… Peter, I can't see the boat!"

Thankful that Jeremy had opted for the extra expense of dual controls, I reset the autopilot from the comfort and safety of the lower bridge and then let go of the wheel. "Don't worry. We can always find the boat."

"We?"

"After all the trouble I went through to find you, do you think I'd risk losing you now?" I mindspeak, stripping off my warm clothes. "I'm coming for you. Change to your natural state. You'll be stronger that way."

"Yes, Peter," she says.

I arch an eyebrow when I realize she hasn't argued with me. Another wave rocks the Grand Banks and I wait for the boat to reach the bottom of the next trough before I rush out the door, slam it behind me and leap from the deck.

Wind tears at me, rain blinds me as I change shape in midair and attempt to fly toward my bride. But I can't overpower the storm. Rather than wear myself out in a futile attempt to conquer the wind, I choose to drop into the water.

"Peter!"

"I'm coming, Elizabeth. Can you sense where I am?"

"It's so far."

I know both of us are too strong to be in much danger, but I'm not sure Elizabeth realizes it. "Don't worry," I tell her. "The water's warm. You'll be fine."

"I'll feel better when you reach me."

A wave swells in front of me. Diving beneath it, I sense what direction I have to take to reach my bride and concentrate on moving through the water with the least effort, using my tail and wings to propel me forward, one strong coordinated stroke at a time.

"I'm swimming toward you now," I say "Swim toward me. You can do it. Go below the water. The waves are less difficult to fight that way.…"

"Yes, Peter."

The distance between us slowly diminishes as we force our way through the water. I swim until my lungs burn, surface long enough to take a few gasps of air, dive and repeat the pattern again and again until I lose any sense of how much time has passed, how many waves I've encountered. When I surface yet another time and yet another wave crashes over me, I sigh, tread water and look around. All I can see are gray skies and breaker after breaker. Diving again, I swim on, wondering how I'll ever reach my bride in such a turbulent sea.

Finally, it's Elizabeth who brings me to her. "Peter, I can feel how near you are. Can you sense me too?" she mind-speaks.

I stop, tread water, concentrate on detecting my bride's presence. "Yes, I can!" I mindspeak and race toward her as she speeds in my direction.

We meet on the surface, rising with a wave, the wind howling at us as we embrace. I wrap Elizabeth in my wings, both of us floating, nuzzling our cheeks against each other.

"Don't be mad at me, Peter," she says.

"Why would I?"

"I didn't pay enough attention. If this happened at home, Pa would be furious. He hates carelessness. He always punishes us, even Mum, when we make stupid mistakes."

"I'm not your father," I say, pulling her closer, glad to have her safe. "You've done nothing wrong. It was just a bad squall."

We float in the water for hours, neither of us speaking, keeping each other afloat until the storm wears itself out. When the winds finally die down, we take to the air and search for our craft. Toward dusk, Elizabeth spots it, fifty miles from where we had floated, making its way north as if nothing had hindered its passage.

Exhausted, we land on the flybridge. Laughing with relief to have something solid beneath our feet, we change into our human forms and rush below. Hunger and cold stop us from collapsing into sleep. Elizabeth gets towels while I check the GPS and read our location.

"Two more days and we'll be home," I tell her as I defrost some steaks in the microwave. We towel each other dry, gorge on the food and afterward, lie in bed, pressed close, warming each other under the covers.

"Peter?" Elizabeth says.

Eyes shut, I nod, wait to hear what she wants to say.

"Do you love me?"

The question makes me open my eyes. I look at Elizabeth, see the concern on her face and resist the impulse to dismiss her question with kisses. Silly, I think, that a relationship as intense as ours has never had any spoken declaration of affection. "Of course I do," I say. "It's just that what we have has been so much more than that…"

"Chloe talks about falling in love all the time," Elizabeth says. "She reads about it in all her books. She says it's a feeling that consumes every part of you. But Mum says that's nonsense, love is for humans. She says our people work differently."

I take Elizabeth's hands in mine, stare into her face. "But I do love you. I'll always want to be with you."

She sighs. "I always want to be with you too. You know that. Neither of us has a choice with that. But today, when you reached me in the water… I felt something more. It's like you touched a place inside me where no one's reached before… only…"

"Only what?" I ask.

"I'm just not sure if that's love or not." Elizabeth shrugs. "I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. And I don't want you to be upset that I'm confused…"

I want her to say she loves me but, even wishing that, I'm not positive I know much more about true love than she. I know our people can love. When Mother died, I watched my father suffer. He wailed and roared and lashed out at everything around him-so much so that I hid from him for days. I wonder if I could care that deeply about anyone. Would Elizabeth's death drive me to such total despair? I'm only sure of our connection to each other, the invisible bond between us so strong that it's almost palpable. For now, that's more than enough for me. "I'm not upset. I know what we have," I say.

"Good." She squeezes my hands in hers. "I'd hate it if you didn't understand."

Later she takes my hand, guides it to the warmth between her legs. "Do you think maybe, you could make love to me tonight, like we were humans, madly in love?"

I grin at her. "I think I can do that."

Elizabeth surprises me with her willingness to forgo any further hunting. She no longer complains when I defrost steaks for us. The closer we get to Miami, the more compliant she becomes. She agrees to don clothing, promises to stay close to me, not to change or fly off until I tell her it's safe.

"This is your country," she says. "Until I get used to it, I'll trust that you know best."

She delights me by finally starting to tell me about her life, growing up in Morgan Hole. "Mum made it as good as she could," she says. "Pa mostly ignored Chloe and me. He paid most of his attention to Derek and then to Philip, after he was born. Derek thought he was too old to have much to do with any of us. It was Mum who took us swimming, horseback riding, flew with us as soon as we could take to the air. She taught us everything-how to make Dragon's Tear wine, how to mix potions. She showed us how to read and write, had us help her in the garden, took us hunting with her. Most especially, as soon as we could understand, Mum taught us to avoid angering Pa.

"We were all afraid of him. Even when we were little he'd occasionally strike us hard enough to draw blood. Most of the time though, he'd take whoever displeased him, lock them in one of the cells under the house and leave them there for a day or two without food or water."

I shake my head, say, "That must have been terrible."

"No," Elizabeth says. "It wasn't so bad. We could always mindspeak to each other. When any of us were punished, the others would sneak down with food and drink. We'd giggle and make a picnic of it. And I wasn't in trouble very often anyway-not after Chloe got older."

"Chloe?" I ask, thinking of her cute younger sister, the smile the little teenager always had on her face, wondering how much of a discipline problem she could be.

"She likes human things too much," Elizabeth says. "Chloe's always reading or painting. She prefers to stay in her human form, goes out of her way to talk to the servants. Pa hates it all, but no matter how much he punishes her, she keeps on doing what she wants."

"Why do you think she likes human things so much?" I ask.

"You're a funny one to ask that question," Elizabeth says. "Why do you?"

"You know I was raised with it," I say. But when Elizabeth continues to look at me, as if she's waiting for more of an explanation, I shrug and continue. "After my mother died, Father told me her family had been accidentally killed in a cannon barrage, in France, during World War One, when she was a baby. An orphanage took her in and raised her. She didn't even know what she was until she came to term. Father found her then and took her for his bride.

"He said, of his three wives, she was his favorite. Father loved how different she was. He tolerated her passion for human art and literature, but argued when she insisted I learn human ways too, that I go to school with them. He worried she would make me too gentle. She said, knowing human things and human behavior would make me more powerful. In the end, Father acquiesced. But I suspect his agreement had more to do with his love for Mother than his respect for her arguments. I think it's a mark of his devotion that, after she died, he continued to send me to school."

"That makes sense." Elizabeth nods. "For Chloe, it was one of the servants. Mum was sick for a few months after she gave birth to my sister. She allowed this one servant, Lila, to take care of Chloe. The two of them grew very close. Even though Mum frowns at it, Chloe still makes sure to spend some time with Lila every day."

"Well I don't think it's hurt her," I say.

"Of course you don't." Elizabeth smiles in a way that slightly parts her lips, as she usually does before sex or when she wants me to do something. "I just hope," she says coming closer, putting her arms around my neck, "you don't wonder whether you got the wrong sister."

Our last night at sea, Elizabeth insists on staying above deck. I sit with her on the flybridge, watching with her for signs of land. The evening ocean has calmed so much that its waters are as flat as any lake and the Grand Banks glides along with only a gentle tip and roll to its movements-the hiss of the water, as it's displaced beneath us, commingled with the purr of our twin diesels. The mild rocking of the boat, the quiet lullaby of the passing waters finally overtake me and I fall into a deep sleep.

Elizabeth stays up, wakes me when she sees lights on the horizon. "The whole sky is glowing over there," she says.

She hugs me when I nod and say, "We're almost home."

The sun begins to break into the sky shortly before we reach the Fowey Rock lighthouse. I turn off the autopilot and take the helm as we approach it, the dark lines of its skeletal structure looking in the early light like a child's construction toy rising from the sea. Elizabeth stares at it, turns toward the lights of Miami-their glow bleaching out from the coming dawn-then gazes back at the dark, light-streaked clouds floating in a sky that first turns gold, then blue on the horizon as the sun rises. "It's all so beautiful," she says.

Her eyes widen as we enter Biscayne Bay and cruise by the first of the stilt homes that line the Biscayne channel, Miami's skyline still too far in front of us to be fully visible. But Key Biscayne, just a few miles to our right, sits close enough to dazzle Elizabeth with its upscale homes and towering, white-concrete condominiums. "Is that Miami?" she asks.

I shake my head, point to the dozens of high-rise buildings slowly rising into sight, far across the water.

"Oh," she says.

A pang of homesickness hits me when I glance to the south and see the green treetops of Soldier Key and the dark smudges on the water beyond it that I know will soon grow to show both Wayward Key and Blood Key. "See the islands?" I ask Elizabeth.

"Is that yours… ours?" She points to Soldier Key.

I shake my head. "Look farther south, the second one past it. That's your new home."

She stares, squints her eyes, then shrugs. "I can't tell," she says. "It's too far."

I examine the sandbars barely showing on either side of the channel, realize the tide has a while to go before it reaches its lowest point, leaving us plenty of time to reach the island. I grin and say, "You'll see it soon enough."