The Dragon Delasangre (27 page)

“You know better, Peter. I can't.”

“You have to force yourself to heal. You have to try, even if it takes your last bit of energy.”

“No,”
she mindspeaks.
“It might kill the baby.”

“Elizabeth,”
I say,
“Without you, what chance does the child have?”

“I won't risk hurting my baby!”

I try to think of something to say to inspire her, to spur her to act in her own interest. I worry that Elizabeth's injuries have weakened her ability to reason.

Santos returns carrying a cannonball under one arm, a canister of powder under the other. He ignores Elizabeth's scrutiny, goes about the business of loading the cannon.

Frantic, I struggle against my shackles.

“I couldn't let that woman harm the baby,”
Elizabeth mindspeaks.

“I understand.”

Once the cannon's loaded, Santos looks at Tindall. “You could help you know,” he says.

Chen laughs, keeps his rifle trained at Elizabeth. “Jeremy doesn't like to get his hands dirty,” he says. “He's used to others doing his work for him.”

Tindall scowls at him, walks over to Santos. “Just show
me what to do,” he says. He grunts and groans as he helps Santos inch the ship killer around, until the black, gaping maw of the cannon aims straight at Elizabeth's head.

Santos stares at her. “I don't know what the hell you are,” he says. “But this should finish you.” He walks away, toward the arms room.

“Peter, I don't want to die,”
Elizabeth mindspeaks.

I pull at my chains as best I can, knowing I lack the strength to escape yet.
“I know, my love,”
I say.

“
Your
love . . . I like that. Peter, I was so young. . . . I was learning. I would have made a good wife for you after the baby was born.”

“I'm sure, love. I'm sure you would have.”
In the dark, I feel tears wetting my cheeks, do nothing to wipe them away.

“Promise me, you'll say good things about me to our son.”

“Of course,”
I say, not quite sure she realizes what she's saying.

Santos returns with a torch he's taken down from the wall.

Elizabeth sighs, says,
“I would have been a very good mother.”

The Cuban lowers the torch's flaming end to the touch hole and the roar of the cannon penetrates the house, reverberating in my cell.

 

Rage alternates with sorrow. I know my bride is dead. For the first time since our marriage, I can't find her touch. I have no sense of her. It's as if I've lost my sight, or my hearing. I am truly alone now, without hope, my future shattered.

Jorge Santos is to blame. I imagine making him die slowly, in great agony.

I yank on my chains but still they resist me. The manacles cut into my wrists and I welcome the pain.

Tears come again and I welcome them too. I understand now how Father felt when Mother died. Like him, I've lost my life's companion. And my child before he's ever known the world. I want to howl and tear my hair. Damn Jorge Santos!

And yet I can't blame the man completely. I am the murderer of his sister. I have been his captor. His woman, if she isn't dead, lies dying on the veranda of my house, mortally wounded by my wife. If anyone has good reason to kill, it is Santos.

And I have no doubt he intends to kill me. I know the man. I calculate how long it will take him to come for me.

As he does when he plays chess, he'll hesitate before he proceeds, fret that his position might be insufficient. With me imprisoned, he'll think he has the time to take every precaution.

First he'll make sure at least two rail guns are loaded. He
won't bother with more, the guns are too large, and more of them would burden him too much.

Besides he has Chen and Tindall as his allies. Though Tindall, I'm sure, will prove worthless. He'll lag behind, argue for caution. As a miliary man, Chen will urge a quick assault. He'll feel safe enough to proceed as long as he holds a loaded machine gun.

But Santos will insist only he knows the house. I'm sure he'll feel the need for further protection before he ventures inside. He'll tarry long enough to load a few pistols too, stick them in his belt. Only then will he search the upper floors for Elizabeth. Only when he doesn't find her, will he come for me.

In truth I'm tempted to let him. My wife and child are gone. I sigh and lie down on my cot. The thought of life alone on my island fills me with dread. Santos, at least, has a mother to return to. I have no one.

I let the dark envelop me. I become nothing lost in nothingness, air floating within air, time lost for all time. I would float away if my chains didn't weigh me down. I would sink if the cot wasn't underneath me. This, I think, must be how it feels to die.

Perhaps I will.

My breathing irritates me. I hate the sound of my heart beating. I want complete silence. I try to still myself, achieve total calm. And still, the quieter I become, the less I move, the more something tweaks at my consciousness. A lingering thought? An emotion my subconscious refuses to stop feeling?

No matter how I try to dampen my senses, it intrudes. Finally, unable to ignore it, I concentrate on identifying it, disregard everything else. The sensations I receive frustrate me with their vagueness. It's almost like mindspeaking but not quite—as if it's slightly merged with the type of closeness Elizabeth and I shared. No words, no images, just feelings—
fleeting impressions of occasional movement, occasionally restricted by something soft (a wall?), sometimes flashes of content, always the overwhelming sensation of moist warmth.

Elizabeth must be dead. I know it. I feel it. Yet my heart races at the thought that some remnant of her consciousness may be left, that some possibility may remain for her resurrection. I reach out for her, mindspeak,
“Elizabeth?”

The answer stuns me. No words to it, no thoughts, just the feather-light touch of another presence brushing against my mind—not my wife but my unborn son.

Henri! My child may yet be saved. The realization changes everything. If I fail, if I permit Santos and the others to win, not only do I die but so does my son. Time, which meant nothing a few moments ago, means everything now.

I curse myself for wallowing in self-pity rather than recognizing the possibility of saving more than myself. By now they must be searching the floors above me. I must take action immediately. I turn my attention back to my surroundings, see nothing. Outside, at least, stars or a partial moon usually give me enough light to see through the darkness. But here in the cell with no lights on anywhere, blackness engulfs me.

The chains that bind me remain too strong to break, but for a creature who can change shape at will that hardly matters. I test whether the effects of the Dragon's Tear have abated enough, concentrate on narrowing my right hand and wrist.

My body seems almost indifferent to my wishes. It conforms to my shapechanging ever so slowly. I concentrate, ignore the pain the change requires and pray Santos's search of the house takes longer than my escape.

Finally, I'm able to slip my hand out of the right manacle.

My left hand and wrist go easier and I escape that fetter
too, turn my attention to my ankles and feet. Only the slave collar remains. That proves the most difficult, as I elongate and narrow my head enough to slip free. I stand as soon as I throw the last chain off and almost topple back—the sudden rush of rising, coupled with the remaining effects of the Dragon's Tear wine and the total dark looming around me disorient and confuse me. I weave in place a few moments, focus my thoughts on where the cell door may be.

When I reach it, I find barely three inches of space exist between each thick iron bar. I almost cry when I think how difficult slipping my body out will be. Surely, I think, it can be done, but I've never attempted such a thing. I back up, pace a few steps. Taking deep breaths, steeling myself for the attempt, I pace a few steps more and walk headfirst into a wall that I didn't expect to encounter.

Then I remember Casey's insistence on putting me in a smaller cell. I grin, shake my head, take more deep breaths to clear my mind, then test my assumption by putting my back to the wall and walking forward until I touch the opposite wall. Just five steps! I almost laugh out loud. Santos will be so confused when he arrives to find the locked cell empty. I grab the end of the cot and yank on it, raising it, opening the passageway to the treasure room below and the door to the dock beyond it.

In their desire to place me in the smallest, least comfortable cell, Santos and Morton, who had no knowledge of the secret passage, unwittingly assured my escape.

Once on the stairs, I close the passageway behind me, take the steps two and three at a time. I waste no time turning on lights. I know the way. Rushing through the corridor, ripping my clothes off, I reach the door to the outside and throw it open. I wrinkle my nose at the stink of sulfur the expended gunpowder has left on the evening air, and change shape.

I leap toward the sky and travel from the dock to the
veranda in a few wingbeats. My poor defiled Elizabeth lies broken and lifeless against the parapet. Casey Morton still lies a few yards away, amazingly still alive, gasping weak, ragged breaths.

Looking out to sea, I grin at the Grand Banks, pitching and bobbing at anchor, a quarter mile off shore. I knew Tindall wouldn't dare risk bringing it any closer.

I search for Santos and the others, make sure they're not lurking somewhere waiting to ambush me. But that is just caution. I'm sure they're still busy inside. Finding me gone will make them expect an attack behind every doorway.

My child remains my primary concern. I open my mind to him and thank the fates when I sense his presence. His mother's body has cooled and that change in his environment has sent the first tendrils of fear into his awareness.

“It's okay. You'll be fine,”
I mindspeak to him, knowing he won't grasp the meaning of the words, hoping he understands the love and reassurance behind them.
“I'm your father, Henri. I'm here to take care of you.”

I shudder as I slice Elizabeth open with my talons. If I could find another way I would, but my son must be saved. Reaching inside her, I search for the sac that holds the baby, find it and cut him free, lifting the slippery creature. My son mewls at the shock of open air.

Cradling him, trying to warm him against my body, I marvel how well-formed the child is—except for his tail, not much larger than a human baby. Henri moves his head and I find myself staring into his emerald-green eyes. I see him and sense everything he feels at the same time and the transfer of love between us makes my legs weak. Poor Elizabeth, I think, what a shame that she couldn't experience this.

I hold the child up to the sky and he mews, opening his mouth, clumsily opening and closing his wings. I feel his pangs of hunger, understand what is required for his
sustenance. This was why my bride wanted our captives on hand, so the child's needs could be served.

The baby mews again when I place him on Casey Morton's chest. But soon he senses the live flesh beneath him and begins to feed. The woman trembles once, at his first attack, and then finally, thankfully, breathes her last breath. I let Henri feed alone a few minutes until, realizing how much energy I've expended, I begin to feast beside him.

A gust of wind blows over us and I wrinkle my nose at the stink it carries to me, the acrid aroma of human perspiration. I keep my head down as I stare upwind with one eye and spot Santos inching forward in the shadows, a rail gun in each hand, two ancient flintlock pistols stuffed through a belt on his waist.

He must have exited the house through one of the bedrooms on the other side, I think, and circled back toward us. I tense my muscles, but continue to feed, watching him, waiting to see where the others are, waiting for them to act.

Santos stops, lowers one gun to the floor, raises the other to his shoulder, aims and a takes a deep breath to steady himself before he tightens his finger on the trigger.

I grab Henri, leap away at that moment, and take to the air, the ball passing where I just was. A machine-gun blast goes off to my rear, Chen following my flight from the shadows, chasing me with his bullets until his clip empties.

“Damn! Fuck!”
Santos yells. He throws the spent gun down, lifts the other, searches the dark sky for any sign of me.

But Henri is my first concern. I spiral around the house, wondering where best to put him. On my second circuit, I decide he'll be safest inside. Holding him close to my body, I crash through the picture window in the great room, grab pillows from the couch and use them to make a place for Henri in the far corner of the cupboard. Leaving him hidden there, I rush down the spiral staircase to my room.

I find the doors to the veranda still open, just as Elizabeth left them when she rushed out. I grin, thinking of the humans' faces when they see me. They'll be looking for me to attack from the sky, not to burst out from the room.

I linger, hidden in the room's shadows while I watch Santos, Chen and Tindall on the veranda, and listen to their conversation.

“Now what do we do?” Tindall asks.

Both Santos and Chen stare at him. “We?” Chen says. “Where's your weapon?”

“You know I don't use those things. I'm a lawyer. I fight with words. . . .”

“So when that thing comes back, we'll stand back and watch you sue it,” Santos says. Chen laughs.

“Laugh all you want. Remember, it's my boat that will take us away from here. Where would you be without me?” Tindall says.

“Don't remind me, Jeremy,” Chen says, pointing his AK-47 in Tindall's direction. “Without you, my company would still be doing business with Caribbean Charm. Without you, my colleagues in China and I would never have lost so much money in the fire. Without you, my son, Benny, would still be alive. Without you, my men would be home with their families.”

Tindall's face flushes. “Don't give me that shit. My son's dead too, you know. I didn't hear you or any of your colleagues object to setting up that company. You wanted to come after DelaSangre as much as I did. Without me, you'd never have known anything about his movements.” He turns to Santos. “Without me, your ass would still be rotting in jail. Who the hell do you think arranged your bail?”

“I did,” Chen says.

“But you never would have known about Santos without me.”

“Shut up, both of you!” the Cuban says.

They turn, staring at him.

“We have to search the house again—and the island. We have to find that thing and the DelaSangres, kill them all.”

Seeing all three men so preoccupied in their conversation, I choose this moment to attack.

“Shit!”
Santos shouts as I explode through the open doorway.

Tindall lets out a high-pitched scream, sees the other dead man's machine gun still lying on the ground, grabs it and runs away.

Chen stands his ground, fires at me, the AK-47 bucking in his hands, the muzzle flashing, almost every bullet striking the armored plates of my underbelly, penetrating them—each impact causing an explosion of pain.

I bellow, rush toward Chen. Santos raises his gun, tries to aim at me. But I'm too much a moving target, slashing out at Chen as I pass, taking to the air to swoop back and slash again. My talons rip flesh and muscle. Chen grasps his slit throat, gargling indecipherable words as he falls.

Santos follows my movements with his gun. Still flying, I veer, then circle away from him, leaving him to aim at an empty sky. Moments later, I return, approaching from his rear, swooping down and slashing his back open as I streak past. To his credit, he finally manages to get off his shot.