Dragon Moon Read online

  “You can say it out loud, son.”

  He looks down, almost mumbles, “You look like my momma did.”

  Chloe crouches next to him, touches his cheek. “She was my sister, Henri. We always looked alike.”

  “Are you going to come live with us?”

  “If you and your father will have me. Is that okay with you, Henri?”

  He nods, turns to me, says, “Can I go swimming now?”

  Chloe and I leave Henri in Granny’s care, drive to Wakefield, hoping to find enough clothes that fit her, to make her presentable enough to go shopping for better clothes in Montego Bay. She sits as close to me as the Land Rover’s bucket seats allow, her hand on my thigh, and stares out the window as she says, “This is my first time outside Cockpit Country. You know how my mum and pa are — they only let Derek venture out.”

  I nod.

  “They already know about us. I told Mum this morning.”

  It comes as no surprise to me. Henri and I aren’t the only ones who can mask their thoughts. “Elizabeth told your mother fairly soon too,” I say.

  “Well, I think Mum took it a bit differently this time.”

  I look at Chloe, raise an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  “She’s in a bit of a snit about it. She thinks it was wrong of you to come back this way — ‘underhanded,’ I think, was the word she used.”

  Sighing, I say, “Can’t she just be happy for us?”

  “You have to understand my parents, Peter. Once they get a thought in their minds, it takes a long time to change it. They expected you to protect Elizabeth. They think you took unfair advantage of me.”

  In-laws. I shake my head. Samantha and Charles Blood had hardly left me with any warm memories from our last meeting. The thought of spending time with them now makes me wish we could leave on the next plane. “Great,” I say. “It should make for a wonderful feast.”

  Chloe laughs. “They’ll still have a wedding feast for us. Mum already said she wants you at Morgan’s Hole two days from now. They don’t hate you, Peter. They’re only angry at you. Mum says she can’t wait to meet Henri. She’ll be even more thrilled when I tell her we’re going to have a daughter.”

  I look at her and my mate smiles, pats her stomach. “You do good work, Peter.”

  We spend the afternoon clothes shopping in Montego Bay. Chloe buys shorts, blouses, jeans and halter tops, dresses, bras and underwear, shoes and sneakers. “This is the first time I’ve ever been able to pick and choose what I want,” she says, “Usually Mum tells Derek what to bring home.” She models each outfit for me, choosing in the end a white sundress and a pair of sandals to wear for the rest of the day.

  If anything, a bookstore, Galways Books, thrills her even more than the clothing store. After an hour of browsing, I have to insist she decide on a few books so we can get back to Bartlet House by dark.

  After dinner, we take Henri outside and let him fly with us. I lead him and Chloe from our house to Windsor, to Barbecue Bottom and Clarkstown and back. Later, when Henri resists his bedtime, Chloe sits on the bed with him and reads a Dr. Seuss book she bought for him.

  Chloe and I fly together after that, hunting again, feeding side by side once more. “You know I have to go home later tonight, don’t you, Peter?” she says once we’re done.

  “Why can’t you stay with us and go back when we go?”

  “Because that’s not what tradition allows. We don’t want to anger my parents any more. It’s just a few days and then we can go to your country. Derek will come to get you the day after tomorrow.”

  I remember the long trip I made with him the last time and groan. “Why don’t I just drive there myself?”

  “You know you’ll never find it. I’m not sure I could. Derek’s a bore, I know that. But he’s not that bad.”

  “Then you spend the day in the car with him.”

  “Not a chance!” Chloe laughs and takes to the air. I chase after her, follow her from valley to valley, my mate always just out of reach. I beat my wings even faster, find myself inches from her tail and, suddenly, she sprays the air with her scent.

  A cloud of cinnamon and musk envelops me. “Not again!” I mindspeak, breathing in her aroma, surrendering to its effect.

  Chloe slows, dipping one wing, turning over in midair so she flies upside down, displaying herself to me. “Does that make it better?” she says, slowing even more as I close with her, positioning herself so I can enter her in midair.

  “Definitely,” I say, joining with her, the night’s calm shattered by our roars.

  17

  Henri and I both wake early and get ready long before Derek arrives. We go outside, wait for Derek on the front steps of Bartlet House, Henri standing, sitting, leaning on me, asking questions until, finally, he sees Granny going to the stables to groom the horses. “Can I, Papa?” he says.

  I nod and the boy rushes off.

  The stone steps have grown hard and painful to sit on by the time Derek pulls his tan Land Rover into the drive in front of the house. Henri and Granny come out of the stables, to see who’s arrived, just as the man gets out.

  “Hello, mon,” Granny says.

  Derek ignores Granny’s greeting. He stretches, examines the house, the stables, the cottages, and walks up the front steps to me. He looks like someone on his way to play tennis. The contrast between his pale white skin, blond hair and rosy cheeks and Elizabeth and Chloe’s choice of darker hair and skin reassures me that the women’s choices were better ones. There’s a wasted look to the man and even though he’s the larger and more muscular one of us two, I’m sure I’m the more vital-looking one. He shakes my hand, squeezing too hard, and grins one of his empty smiles. “Not too shabby, old man. Not too shabby at all.”

  “Glad you like it,” I say, motioning to my son to join us, introducing Henri.

  Derek glances at him, turns back to me. “Let’s get going, old man. You know my mum. She’ll frown at me for a month if we’re late.”

  At my request, Derek opens the trunk. I put two suitcases in and place the wooden chest beside them. The man can’t keep his eyes off the chest. “Gold, isn’t it?”

  I nod and he laughs. “You learned your lesson didn’t you? At least you know the way to Pa’s heart — if the old bugger has one.”

  Derek continues to talk as we get in the Land Rover. I check my pants pocket, make sure Chloe’s gift, the earrings to match her necklace, is there before we drive away. “I can’t believe you, old man,” he says, driving with one hand, gesturing with the other as he talks, Henri, in the backseat, staring out the window ignoring his words, me wishing I could do the same.

  “Two brides of our kind in five years. I’m ten years older than you and haven’t had one yet. Of course, you had to cheat to get your last one.” He laughs. “Not that I blame you, old man. All’s fair and all that, what? Don’t know why Mum and Pa are so put out. ‘Someone had to eventually get Chloe,’ I told them. Why not you? After all, at least you’re rich.”

  Derek drones on about the human women he’s encountered, his plans to eventually leave his father’s house. I nod and occasionally make a monosyllabic answer, but mostly I look out the window and try to memorize key landmarks so should I ever return again, I can do so without the man’s company.

  We go a different way than I expected, driving through Windsor, past the road to the cave, entering Cockpit Country, crossing the trail that hikers take through it to Troy on the other side. Derek follows a near invisible path through the brush. Having been taken through Cockpit Country before, I’m no longer alarmed by the sheer drops on the edge of our trail, the apparent lack of any real roadway. I realize if I study the ground carefully enough I can make out the faint impressions of tire wheels.

  I find myself looking forward to my wedding feast, most especially to the potion of Dragon’s Tear wine and crushed Death’s Rose petals that Samantha Blood will prepare. Elizabeth and I shared such a potion at our wedding feast and both of us had been
stunned to find ourselves sharing every thought, every feeling we had. The potion’s effect had mostly gone by the next morning, but it left us with a permanent connection I sorely miss now.

  To share such an intimacy with Chloe! I sigh. It had been thrilling to do so with Elizabeth, who’d been so different from me. It could only be better, more intense with Chloe.

  We go up and down hillsides, our ears popping in each direction. Derek surprises me by shifting the subject of his conversation from him to me. “Tell me, old man, what it’s like living in Miami? How do you manage it? I mean, hunting and all?”

  I tell him about life on my island, where I hunt, how I conceal my activities. Derek says, “But what about your wealth? How can you have so much — like all that gold?” He gestures back toward the trunk. “And Pa have so little?”

  “Don Henri always saved most of his treasure,” I say. “And he learned to invest it too.”

  “How?” Derek says. He guides the car around deep sinkholes and drives on the edges of circular lakes, steering around some trees, under others as I explain about LaMar Associates, the humans who run it for me, the investments they manage and the miracle of compound growth.

  Derek shakes his head. “Pa would never trust any human with any of his wealth. He hates dealing with the creatures. He and Mum barely ever leave left Cockpit Country. I’m the one who has to go to the outside world. Bloody damned pain that. I’m expected to bring back enough money to support us.”

  “Land Rovers aren’t cheap,” I say. “You seem to be doing okay.”

  “Do you know how many fool tourists carry barely anything but credit cards? Sometimes I think it’s hardly worth killing them. If it weren’t for those street peddlers in Montego Bay selling ganja to the tourists, we wouldn’t have hardly anything. Whenever things get tight, I look for one of them, right after an American cruise ship has departed. You can almost always count on finding a big roll of Yankee currency in their pockets.

  “But,” — Derek slows the car, steers around yet another tree — “you can only kill just so many of those buggers before you mess things up. Most the time it’s tourists — Montego Bay, Negril, Ocho Rios — a little bit of cash, some traveler’s checks, jewelry, cameras and watches. I take all of it, except the cash, to Kingston every month, to Virgil Claypool. He turns it into money for us.”

  Derek looks at me. “I envy you, old man. Your pa set you up proper.” He turns his attention back to the wheel. “I bet he left you with a large bit of treasure too. Like that chest of gold you brought? Where do you keep stuff like that, old man? I mean you can’t march into a bank and say, ‘Store this for me.’ Can you?”

  I look at Derek, wonder why he would think I’d answer a question like that. “Father made the proper arrangements for everything,” I say. “Chloe will be well taken care of.”

  To my relief, Derek turns silent, concentrates on his driving. Because of the roughness of the terrain, there are times we slow to the speed of a walking man. I doubt we go faster than ten miles an hour anywhere within Cockpit Country.

  Henri takes it all in, breaks the quiet periodically by pointing to different birds, asking their names. Green parrots, doctor birds, glossy black grackles and two John Crow vultures circling over a tiny valley are all named and duly noted.

  We skirt a deep sinkhole and I recognize it by its steep sides and the jagged stones near its bottom, looking like huge white fangs sticking out of the greenery. I remember it from my previous visit to the Bloods’ home. My heart speeds up. I look out the windshield and see, not too far in front of us, the two sheer cliffs that define the pass into Morgan’s Hole.

  Driving through it, we descend to the flat valley floor. “Home,” Derek says and floors the accelerator. We speed across the valley, stopping in its middle by a pile of stones.

  Derek honks his horn and in a few minutes a contingent of Jamaican men, dressed in ragged clothes, steel rings around their necks, arrive with two thick wooden planks, stop by a similar pile twelve feet in front of us. Derek looks at me. “You pay your humans. Ours work for free.” He guffaws.

  The Jamaicans stand the planks on end and carefully lower them directly ahead of each of the Land Rover’s front tires.

  “There’s a fault here,” I explain to Henri as we drive across. “Like a big crack in the ground. It runs the whole width of the valley.”

  My son stares at the ground in front of us. “I don’t see it, Papa.”

  “It’s under the ground. If we stepped on it, we’d fall through.” I don’t tell Henri, the last time I was here I’d tested the danger of the ground by placing one foot on it, bearing down with my weight for only a second. Had I continued, I would have crashed through and fallen, God knows how far.

  Speeding past fields, by the tidy wood shacks that serve as slave quarters for the Blood’s dozens of forced laborers, we soon come to the stables and the two towering silk cottonwood trees that mark the entrance to Chloe’s home. Derek parks next to another Land Rover, a white one, under the trees and we all get out.

  Henri tilts his head back, stares at the tops of the silk cottonwoods, over a hundred feet in the air, the massive stone house set into the hillside behind them. “It’s bigger than our house, Papa,” he says.

  I nod, look between the trees at the rest of Derek’s family waiting for us on the front porch of the house, all in their human forms. Charles and Samantha Blood stand in the middle of the porch, with Philip to the right of his father. While Chloe’s parents have chosen to dress in formal Victorian garb, the teenager wears only a T-shirt and jeans.

  Charles and Samantha look as white and aristocratic as ever. Philip however, who, when I last saw him, had chosen to look as pale as his father, now has adopted the dark skin and Jamaican features of his sister. He wears his hair platted close to his skull. I think how irritated Charles Blood has to be with his son’s current choice, and have to stifle a grin as I do.

  Derek opens the car trunk and Samantha waves a hand toward two blacks dressed in tattered clothes, steel rings around their necks. They rush forward, take Henri’s and my luggage. Derek takes the chest himself, walks with it, swaggers really, toward his father. Henri and I follow. “Peter brought this for you — for us, Pa.” He hefts the chest and laughs. “From the feel of it, it’s a good bit of gold. It should make you happy, Pa.”

  Charles gives a stiff nod.

  “He’s so big, Papa,” Henri whispers to me.

  “That’s your grandfather,” I say, understanding the boy’s reaction. Charles Blood towers over everyone, Derek and me included. I know Derek lives in fear of his displeasure. Elizabeth had told me of the times both she and Chloe had been locked in the cells beneath the house as punishment for their disobedience.

  Charles looks at me. “I’m glad to see you believe in following at least some of our people’s traditions. Too bad you couldn’t follow the others and leave our last daughter alone.”

  “There’s no tradition against what he did!” Philip says.

  The elder dragon glowers at his younger son. “There are ways to pursue a mate and there are ways not to.” He glares at me. “If it were up to me, sir, you would not be welcome here. But my wife tells me I’m wrong.”

  “You should learn to listen to your wife,” I say.

  Charles’s glare intensifies.

  I return it, refuse to shift my eyes from his. Father-in-law or not, the man deserves to be taught some manners. Clenching my fists, trying to control the rage that threatens to overtake me, I say, “If I’m unwelcome here, I’ll be glad to take Chloe and leave. You don’t have to trouble yourself for us. You can keep the gold. It’s meaningless to me.”

  “Chloe will go nowhere until after the feast. That hopefully should be the last time I ever have to endure your presence.” He turns, enters the house, Derek following him with the chest.

  Samantha Blood smiles at me, but there’s no warmth in her grin. “My husband is a stubborn man, as I suspect you are, Peter. He blames you f
or the death of one daughter and the theft of another. Can you blame him for his anger?”

  “I can for his rudeness.”

  She waves a hand in the air as if to dispel the conversation. “They’re only words, Peter. You have my grandson beside you and my granddaughter growing in Chloe’s womb. Of course, you’re welcome here.”

  Coming down the stairs, she kisses me on one cheek, bends over and kisses Henri on his forehead. “You look so much like your father,” Samantha says. “Too bad he didn’t encourage you to look a little like your mother too.”

  Philip hangs back until she too goes inside, then rushes to Henri and me. He offers his hand, says, “Sorry, mon. Sometimes my parents can be difficult to take.” He smiles a wide grin. “Don’t think they’ve never turned their displeasure on me.”

  The teen kneels, fusses over Henri. “Chloe told me to tell you, she can’t wait until the feast’s over.”

  “Me too,” I say. “If it’s up to me, we’ll be on our way out of here tomorrow.”

  “No fair,” Philip says. “That means I’ll be stuck here alone with all of them.”

  “You can come visit us.”

  He half laughs, half snorts. “Like they’ll ever let me.”

  Inside the house I’m taken again, as I was on my last visit, how far back in time it seems. Torches and candles light the interior. All water for washing and drinking is carried in pitchers to the rooms by black slaves. Windows lack glass and screens and are closed with wooden shutters. I guess my father’s house was like this in 1700.

  I wonder what Charles Blood did with the gold I sent him for Elizabeth. Surely that was enough to pay for wiring and generators, plumbing and pumps. Not that I really care.

  Pacing in my room, anxious for the day to be done, the time for the feast to arrive, I wish Chloe could just leave with me now. If only marriage were possible without involvement with a spouse’s family. I hate that my son has to be exposed to these creatures, hope that Chloe can escape the bad part of their genes.