“At least this time it was just one fisherman that disappeared,” she says. “Channel Seven’s saying it’s a terrorist plot. The rest of the news shows are calling whoever’s doing it the Nautical Killer. They think it’s some sort of serial murderer.”
“Same pattern?” I say, turning to the windows that look east over Biscayne Bay toward the skylines of Coconut Grove and Miami. Barely a ripple shows on the calm blue water. Ordinarily this early on a March morning I wouldn’t expect to see more than one or two boats. Today I count five—two clearly marked with the orange angular slash of the Coast Guard, the others, I think, most probably Marine Patrol or news media.
“The same. They found the boat floating. No one on board. No blood this time though.”
“Damn! I’m tired of this,” I say, turning back. “Whoever’s doing it should move on. They’re just going to panic everybody more. The authorities already have more boats out patrolling today.”
“I know,” Chloe says. “I looked before. They have a helicopter out there too. It passed by when you were downstairs helping Henri.”
“Didn’t need any help,” Henri says. “I can get ready by myself.”
I tousle his hair with my right hand and say, “If only you’d do it.”
Henri grimaces and smooths his hair with his hand. “I was tired,” he says. He brushes past me, sits at the large oak table in the center of the room. The boy—almost eight now and finally large enough to sit without his feet dangling—stares at the TV. Elizabeth shouts, “Enee!” and toddles over to play on the floor near him. He continues to gape at the TV as if she didn’t exist.
I look at my recalcitrant son and wonder why he’s recently chosen to rise late each school morning. Elizabeth babbles something incomprehensible and I turn my attention to her.
Both children possess the emerald-green eyes and tendency toward muscularity and wide shoulders that all of our kind have. I say, “Well, there’s no denying these two are related.”
Chloe nods. “They’d look even more alike if Henri had known his mother.”
I can’t resist turning my head toward the north windows, which overlook the grave of my poor murdered first wife, Elizabeth—my daughter’s namesake and my wife’s older sister. “True,” I say.
Henri shows no trace of his mother in his appearance. He’s chosen to mimic my blond hair, cleft chin and Scandinavian features. Our daughter Elizabeth, however, can’t be denied by either of us. On her, Chloe’s Jamaican features, full lips, wider nose and wiry hair combine with my chin and hair color. Even Elizabeth’s complexion is a mix—mocha only a shade darker than her half-brother’s well-tanned white skin rather than the rich milk-chocolate brown of her mother.
“You have to admit they’re both beautiful children,” I say.
Chloe sniffs. “Like beauty is hard for creatures like us?”
I grimace at the remark. It reminds me all too well of my father’s disapproval when, in my youth, I chose to reshape my features using popular movie actors as my models.
“We change our shapes for our survival, not to feed our vanities,”
Father said.
Not that my father or my mother or any of Chloe’s family ever chose to appear in their human forms as anything less than attractive.
Joining Chloe in the kitchen, I take down plates and utensils for our breakfast and set the table while she warms the steaks in the microwave. The aroma of blood and near-raw meat fills the air, and Henri’s dog Max pads into the room and lies down near the boy. With black fur and a massive head and jaws, he, like his pack, looks more like a hyena than any domestic breed of dog.
Chloe brings a full platter of meat to the table, puts a thick steak on each of our plates and puts another plate of meat on the floor for Max. Elizabeth grabs her steak with both hands and bites off a chunk just as quickly as the dog bites his. She barely chews before she swallows and rips off another chunk.
“No Lizzie, wait, let me cut it for you,” Chloe says.
Elizabeth nods, swallows saliva as she watches her mother cut the near-raw meat into bite-size pieces. As soon as Chloe finishes, our daughter grabs a piece, devours it and then does the same to another. My wife laughs. “So much for using our fork today.”
Chloe begins to eat her steak, and I cut off a piece of mine and put it in my mouth. I close my eyes at the rich taste of raw flesh and blood. When I open my eyes I see that Henri has yet to eat a bite of his breakfast.
Henri glowers at his meat, the blood puddled around it. “We always have meat,” he says. “I want Froot Loops. Brian Edelstein told me his parents always give him Froot Loops for breakfast!”
I sigh, glance at Chloe. She stifles a grin, busies herself with her food. {
Not really fair,
} I mindspeak, masked so the children can’t hear me. {
You’re the one who insisted we send him to school on the mainland. I told you how difficult it was for me when my mother sent me there.
}
{
And you’re the one who can relate to how it feels. I never went to school with them. Don’t you think you’re the one who should handle it?
}
Henri, who’s noted our silence and watched our expressions says, “I hate when you guys do that!”
“Don’t you mindspeak to Lizzie sometimes so we can’t hear you?” Chloe says.
The boy shrugs, pushes his plate away.
I frown at him. “You’re not going to get Froot Loops. Eat your breakfast.”
“But Brian . . .”
“Forget what Brian eats or doesn’t eat,” I say. “He isn’t of the blood and you are.” I pause, shocked to hear how much I sound like my father.
“I wish I wasn’t!” Henri says.
“Put out your hand!”
I mindspeak, glaring at my son.
The boy’s lower lip trembles but he holds out his right hand. I hold mine out too, so our fingertips almost touch.
“Watch!”
Willing the bones of my hand to lengthen, I smile at the small thrill of pain that shoots up my arm as they grow, my hand’s flesh turning to scales and my nails lengthening and hardening into sharp talons. Henri stares at my hand, pulls his back as mine grows to its natural shape and length.
“Now you,”
I mindspeak.
We both watch his hand as the skin contorts and hardens, as the fingers grow, as the nails thicken and extend. I make a clawed fist and then open it, and he mimics the movement.
“It feels good doesn’t it?”
I say.
Henri nods.
“We are what we are boy. Don’t ever forget it. We eat meat. We hunt. We kill,”
I mindspeak.
“We are People of the Blood. Our kind once ruled this earth. Men called us dragons and were right to fear us. Any one of us can kill any one of them with a flick of a claw. Your grandfather built this house that we live in. He built the company that keeps us rich.
“What did your friend Brian’s grandfather build, a law office? Brian can’t mindspeak. He can’t change shape. He can’t fly. He can’t hunt. . . .”
“We don’t do any of that anymore either!” Henri says, his arm still extended, his hand still in its natural shape. “You promised I could go with you when I’m eight but we don’t practice anything anymore. We never eat fresh prey . . . not ever.”
I draw in a breath and look at my son. It hadn’t occurred to me that our self-imposed abstinence from hunting would weigh as heavily on Henri as it does on Chloe and me. Other than saying, “It isn’t safe right now,” I haven’t explained why we haven’t flown or hunted in the last few months. Nor did I think it important to share how much surveillance the authorities have placed in the waters near our island or what danger that would bring to us should any of them discover any of us flying overhead.
Willing my hand to return to its human shape, watching as Henri does the same, I wonder if I’ve been too cautious. When I was little my father always repeated,
“Peter, no one ever died from taking too much care.”
But I doubt Don Henri would have chosen to go so long without fresh meat just because some humans were in an uproar.
I mull over all my favorite hunting areas and the time it usually takes for me to fly to them. Of course, I think, some could be reached by other means.
“What if I promised you that this weekend we’ll do all the things—change into our natural shapes, fly and hunt and eat fresh prey—just like we used to?” I say.
“Really?”
I nod, and for the first time this morning, Henri smiles. He pulls his plate back and begins to wolf down his food.
After the boy leaves to ready himself for school, Chloe looks at me and says, “Okay, you’re the one who’s been telling me how careful we have to be. So just how do you plan to keep your promise?”
“The boy’s right. It’s been too long,” I say, a grin growing on my face. “They can put all the patrols around here that they want. There’s no rule that we have to stay here while they do.”
3
On Saturday morning Henri wakes before any of us. I find him outside, on the dock, taking the canvas cover off my twenty-seven-foot Grady White motorboat. I watch, nod my approval as he carefully unsnaps each fastener and folds and stows the canvas as he’s been taught.
“We’re taking this one, aren’t we Papa?” he says.
I smile, say, “Yes.” Once it would have been the only choice. But now, thanks to Chloe, boats of all types crowd our little round harbor, take up the entire length of the dock. Her sixteen-foot red Donzi, a sleek, low-riding speedboat she loves to race around in on calm days, sits tied up behind the Grady White. Behind that, ever since Chloe saw one speeding by our island, we now keep a twenty-four-foot Corsair trimaran. Two Polaris personal watercraft sit on the harbor shore near the dock next to a pair of Mistral windsurfers, matching pairs of one- and two-man kayaks and a sixteen-foot Hobie catamaran sailboat.
All the boats and Chloe’s frequent use of them, as well as her insistence that I upgrade the motors on my Grady White from twin two hundreds to twin two-twenty-fives—for more speed—have caused me to install two fifty-five gallon fuel drums with electric fuel pumps. I supervise Henri’s topping off of the Grady White’s fuel tanks before we go upstairs for breakfast.
We leave shortly before ten, all of us in bathing suits and bringing with us beach blankets, towels, some extra clothes, water and a quantity of plain, rare roast beef sandwiches no different than the ones Chloe makes each day for Henri’s school lunch.
Chloe insists on taking the wheel, and I grin when she shoves the throttles forward as soon as we exit the harbor. “The day couldn’t be more perfect!” I say over the roar of the boat’s two Yamaha outboards. “I checked the weather reports and they say the ocean should be like glass for the next few days.”
Nodding, Chloe concentrates on guiding the boat through the winding curves of our unmarked channel. She knows, as well as I, that rocks lurk beneath the surface on either side of us. Sitting between us, Elizabeth laughs at every movement of the boat, smiles at the wind rushing through her hair. Henri goes back, opens the stern bench and sits sideways, his head turned to the rear so he can watch our wake spread out behind us.
As soon as we emerge from the channel, Chloe takes a long, looping turn to the north and then shoots through the narrow channel between our island and Wayward Key, an uninhabited bird sanctuary. Henri points to our wake smashing against both islands and laughs, “Look, Papa!”
I nod. I can’t count the number of times I’ve railed against boaters who’ve done the same thing. But that was before I married a speed demon. We barely make it into the ocean before two Marine Patrol boats approach us, rotator lights flashing.
Chloe slows the Grady White, then drops the motors to idle as the patrol boats come closer. One boat hangs back while the other pulls alongside us. An older policeman, dressed in full dark blue uniform, gun strapped on his hip, comes over to the side of his boat and holds onto the railing for balance as he says, “Sorry folks. With all the fuss going on we have to stop everyone.” He looks around at the deserted waters, grins a wry smile. “At least the few who are still willing to venture out.”
The other cop on the patrol boat, younger, dressed the same as his companion, glances at Chloe, studies her skimpy red bikini and then looks away, only to look back a few moments longer. While my bride has let herself age in tandem with her years, at twenty-one she still looks far too young to be Henri’s mother. The young officer, who can’t be much older than Chloe, seems puzzled that she’d be with someone who appears almost ten years older, like me.
I frown at him, think how much more confused he’d be if I told him how long my kind live and my true age—more than three times hers. The other policeman clears his throat, begins to ask me questions. “We live on that island, Caya DelaSangre,” I say. “You’ll find it called Blood Key on the charts. My name’s Peter DelaSangre and this is my wife, Chloe, and our children, Henri and Elizabeth.”
The policeman smiles at Lizzie. “She’s an adorable little girl.”
I nod, look at my daughter too, glad she can control her shape and behavior at such a young age. I credit Chloe’s patient teaching for that. Under my tutelage, Henri at the same age was incapable of holding his human form for very long. I doubt he’d have been able to resist attacking any human who came too close.