"But you've always promised that one day I'd meet a woman of our blood.…"
"And so I've always hoped." He sighs again. "We are so few."
I sit on the hay at his side, watch the fire catch and listen to it crack and pop. "How will I find her. Father? Her scent came on a southeast wind last night. The wind shifted to the north today. She could be almost anywhere below us."
He takes a deep, rasping breath, coughs and wheezes as he sits up next to me, puts a wizened, taloned hand on my shoulder. "She's most probably in the Caribbean. The wind will shift again and, if she's untaken, you can follow her scent."
"Untaken?" I stare at the old creature. It hadn't occurred to me that she could have more than one suitor. "First you talk as if we're the last ones of our kind, then you speak as if there are hundred of us.…"
"Peter," he says, and shakes his head as he goes on, "I don't know how many of us are left-whether we're three or three thousand. I doubt she's yet taken. But I want you to know it's a possibility. Which is why, the next time you smell her on the air, you have to go to her."
"And leave you here alone?"
Father sighs. "I've lived a very long time. You know that. Your mother was my third wife. I had six sons and three daughters before you-all dead now. Soon it will be time for me to go too."
"All the more reason for me to stay with you now."
"All the more reason for me to go." Father forces himself to his feet, shambles across the room on all fours and lies by the fire.
"The heat feels good on these old bones," he says. "I'm tired, Peter. Time has long since ceased being my friend. If you hadn't been born, I would have died when I lost your mother. I've forced my lungs to work, my heart to beat these last few years to make sure you weren't alone. Now that I can be sure there are others of us out there, I can think of letting go."
"No!" I say out loud.
He nods, ignores my distress. "Our females come to maturity in their eighteenth year. After that, until they mate, they cycle every four months. During each cycle but their first, they're usually in heat for three weeks. If this is a young one, as I suspect she is, what you've smelled on the air is the result of her first oestrus and that typically lasts only a few days. I doubt any male will have time to find her in such a short interval."
"Why are you so sure it's the Caribbean?"
Father coughs, stares into the fire as he goes on. "When the DelaSangres came to the New World, we weren't the only people of the blood to make the trip. Pierre Sang, Jack Blood and Gunter Bloed sailed ships across the Atlantic too. Eventually, Sang settled in Haiti, Blood in Jamaica and Bloed in Curacao. But all of our ships sailed together for six months each year looting ships and taking prisoners."
I look at Father, my eyes wide. "You never told me you sailed with others of our kind."
He shrugs. "It was long ago. What better way could there be to maintain our wealth and keep our larder full?" We were all privateers. Each of us carried Letters of Marque-Blood's from England, Song's from France, Bloed's from Holland and mine from Spain. We kept our ships and human crews on the islands south of us. None of the crew ever questioned what became of our captives. They were very good years… until the Europeans turned on us and banned privateering. After that, we went our own ways."
"And you think their families are still on those islands?"
"Most probably." Father turns to me. "She will come to term again in four months, sometime in July. You must be ready to pursue her. If she mates with another, she'll be lost to you forever."
The fire's heat burns into me and I wonder how the old creature can like it so much. "What if she won't have me?" I ask.
He laughs. "Our women don't work that way. Until they've mated for the first time, when they're in heat they're available to any male that finds them. Whichever one takes her, has her for life."
"It's that easy?"
Father grins, showing every one of his pointed yellowed teeth. "Easy?" He cackles and I blush at his reaction, feeling like a young boy all over again. "Peter, with our women nothing's easy. Remember, they're the true hunters among us, fearless, impetuous and far too daring."
He shakes his head. "Even your mother, who loved gentle pursuits, who cherished her music, books and arts. She was the one who insisted on your being educated like a human. Even she could be unmanageable and headstrong. …" He pauses and coughs. "If she listened to me, she wouldn't have gone off hunting that night. I told her, with the war going on, the seas were too dangerous. But she insisted on crossing the Florida Straits to hunt over Cuba. On her return she flew too close to a surfaced German submarine. I doubt their gunner realized what she was. The night was too black for him to make out more than a large shadow passing in the dark. But he sprayed the sky with machine-gunfire, striking her with one of the bursts, doing too much damage for her to repair.
"She tried though, flying until she found a deserted key thirty miles west of Bimini."
I nod, knowing the story, remembering her last few thoughts calling to us so faintly from so many miles, so far away. Father and I had traveled to that island-no more than a glorified sandbar really-and had buried her body there, that night, before there was any possibility of its discovery.
Father senses my thoughts and says, "I want you to bury me next to her."
"Of course," I say, experiencing once again the loss of her, wondering how devastating the loss of him will be.
The old creature studies my expression and cackles anew. "Don't be so morose, Peter. I'm not dying tonight or tomorrow night either. Think of the young bride you're soon to have. Dwell on that and the creation of new life rather than this old creature in front of you. Go now. You've plans to make and things to do. I have memories I want to visit before I sleep again."
The wind and rain slam against my closed windows when I return to my room. The large exterior oak doors creak and rattle with each gust. I look out the window and see only the dark sky and the white crests of the breaking waves. For a moment, I question whether I want to go out in this. To do otherwise would be to dwell on all the things Father has told me and, just now, I'd rather put my mind elsewhere, worry and plan another day.
I grab my foul-weather gear from the closet, bundle it under one arm. The gold glint of Maria's jewelry catches my attention and I realize I've forgotten to put it away. I scoop that up and drop it in my pocket, then leave my room and bound down the wide steps of the great spiral staircase.
At the bottom, I pick up the burlap bag containing Maria's bones, sling it over one shoulder and walk to the sixth and smallest cell. Inside, it looks like all the rest except that the stone walls remain unmarred. No prisoner has ever had the opportunity to draw or gouge messages on its wall. No captive has ever slept in this room.
I put down the burlap bag and seize the end of the wood cot bolted to the stone floor. It creaks and rasps as I pull up on it, refusing to budge at first, then rising slowly, floor and all, on hinges hidden underneath, speeding up as the lead counterweights hanging below take effect, revealing a narrow staircase leading down into darkness.
Once again slinging the burlap bag over my shoulder, I enter the passageway. The black surrounds me as I descend the stairs. At their end, a dangling rope slaps my face. Once this surprised me but, after all the trips I've made through this dark passageway, it's as familiar as the ocean sounds outside my window. I give it a hard tug and grin at the groan of the moving floor above, the crash as it slams shut.
I proceed forward in the dark, my shoulders brushing against the cool stone walls of the passageway, my hair touching the ceiling. There's no light here and, with only one direction to travel, no need for it. After forty paces I feel the corridor widen, the ceiling rise above me. Running my fingers over the wall to my right, I find the switch and flick it on.