Read Online The Dragon Delasangre by Alan F. Troop - Free Book Online Page A

think, I could busy myself with these things. Butthere’s no priest for me to turn to, no ritual I can embrace—even Father’s estate has long since been transferred to my name, his death faked years before and recorded then by our family’s attorneys.
    After dark, at least, I’ll be able to carry Father’s body to the island where my mother’s buried and keep my promise to lay him down beside his beloved. Until then there’s nothing to do but wait and surrender to the pain.
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    Dark comes late this time of year and I spend the day wandering the grounds and the veranda, hating the bright light of day, the white sails billowing far off at sea, the gulls soaring in the sky, rupturing the quiet of the day with their raucous caws.
    I throw off my clothes as soon as night falls, change shape in the dark shadows near the walls of the house. Truly my father’s son now, I spread my wings to the evening air and leap into the sky.
    The rushing air embraces me and I flex the great muscles on my back, push huge quantities of air with each beat of my wings. Ordinarily the mere act of flying fills me with joy, but tonight sorrow and anger consume me. Higher, faster, I spiral over my island. I want—I need to feed, to taste life as it drains away, and I want to taste it soon. I have no patience for caution this night. I descend in a long gentle curve as I search the surrounding waters for prey.
    A lone fisherman, foolish enough to anchor his thirteen-foot Boston Whaler on the ocean side of Sand Key catches my attention. He shifts his weight with each passing swell, trying to maintain his balance as he casts his rod, even as I wheel in the air above him, unseen.
    I fold my wings tight to my body and drop, gathering speed with every foot of my descent, reveling in the roar of the air rushing around me. Just before I crash into the sea, I snap my wings out, struggle to keep them extended as Ibattle the air to stop my fall, the momentum of my dive jetting me forward now, gliding low enough to feel the waves brush my underbelly, my taloned claws unclenched, ready to grab, to rip, to tear.
    He sees me at the last moment—a dark apparition rushing toward him, out of the blackness of the night—and freezes. Good, I think, I want him to see the coming of his death.
    A single beat of my wings raises me into position and I strike, my rear talons digging into flesh, jerking my prey from the boat as I glide past. The fisherman is so shocked, he still grasps his rod, the line trailing behind us as I soar skyward.
    Other nights I would regret the death of an innocent being, but tonight I feel no guilt, extend no pity. I climb into the sky and, on a whim, release my prey. He screams, finally dropping his rod, flailing the air with his legs and arms as he falls. Laughing, ravenous, I strike him in midair, open his midsection with one stroke of one claw, grab him with another, holding him and feeding even before his life fades away. I consume him entirely in flight, discarding what little remains of him miles out, over the Gulfstream.
    Fighting the languor that always comes after feeding, I fly home to gather up my father and carry him to his wife’s side.
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    The island has changed little since Father and I last visited it. Stones, grass and weeds, a few clumps of scrub brush and even fewer scrawny pine trees are all that break the monotony of its sandy existence.
    Clutching Father beneath me, I have to fly over the entire length and width of the island four times before I find the pile of stones we placed to mark Mother’s grave. It’s on the highest point of land—a wind-built dune on the northernquadrant of the island, barely twelve feet higher than the beach.
    I land there, gently place Father down and survey Mother’s resting place. Grass and weeds have overgrown any sign that a grave had been dug there. Only the stones, carefully piled to mark the grave, remain as testimony to