The idea of a female of my own kind consumes me, occupies my mind, crowds out all other thoughts. I have dozens of questions, all of which Father ignores. "Later, Peter," he tells me as his head nods and his eyelids close. "Let me rest now. Come to me tonight and we'll talk more."
His breathing turns rhythmic and I know it's useless to try to rouse him. I look at the bones scattered around him, stripped of all meat, and shake my head at his gluttony. I have no choice but to wait for him to sleep past his languor.
The yips and growls of the dogs outside remind me I've much to do. They've caught the aroma of the kill and are waiting now, not so patiently, for their share. I carry the entrails, and the other body parts Father chose not to eat, out onto the veranda and throw them over the parapet to the hungry pack below. Then I return to my room and busy myself with removing all traces of Maria from the house.
As I strip the bloodstained bedding from my mattress, I take extra breaths, hoping to smell some trace of cinnamon in the air, but the air carries only its usual sea smells. What little wind there is blows light and seems to shift direction every few minutes.
I think about the breezes of the night before, the strong gusts that seemed to have a life of their own and I try to remember if the wind had shifted during the evening too. Surely if I can remember the wind's direction and follow its route backward, it will lead me to her.
Carrying the sheets and Maria's belongings up the spiral staircase to the third floor, I feed them to the fire in the great open hearth. I try to recall where the wind came from during the last evening, but my memory fails me. My attention had been on Maria, not on the bend of the trees' limbs or the direction of the waves. I know that further toward the summer, a southeast wind blows almost every day and night. During the winter, the north wind brings its chilling effect. But in March, the wind could just as easily come from any point of the compass.
I add logs to the blaze, listen to them crack and pop as they catch fire, watch the sheets and Maria's belongings flame, then turn dark and shrivel into ashes.
A weak gust of air blows through the room and I sniff at it expectantly. Nothing.
The wind ruffles the flames in the fireplace and carries away with it a thin trail of smoke as it courses through the remainder of the room, exiting the window opposite the one it entered.
Watching the smoke's passage, I remember the winds blowing through my bedroom the night before, which windows they seemed to favor. I grin and go on with my work, walking to the top of the staircase, grabbing the thick, manila rope wrapped around a large iron cleat bolted to the wall, scooping up the excess line coiled on the floor below it.
A southeast wind! I'm sure of it now, remembering the play of it over our bodies, the windows it entered and exited, and before that the ridges of water rolling northward across the bay. A wind blowing from that direction meant she lived somewhere in the Caribbean or Latin America. I try to picture how exotic she might be.
All of it makes me feel positively adolescent and, for the first time in more years than I care to think, I unwrap the rope from the cleat, grasp it tightly with my right hand and, holding the excess line in my left, jump the railing and launch myself into the open middle of the staircase.
Above me, hanging from a huge hook set in the center of a massive roof beam, an ancient arrangement of wooden blocks and tackle screeches and groans as the rope rushes through it, the line suddenly taut from the heavy burden of my falling body-its motion slowed by the counterweight of the hoist's wooden platform my weight brings up from the bottom floor.
I laugh as the platform rushes past me at the second floor, brace my legs for the rough landing I'm about to make on the first. Judging from the speed of my descent, I must outweigh the platform by at least fifty pounds-a far different disparity than in my younger days, when there was some doubt about which was heavier.
Mother used to hate when I attempted it, insisting Father discipline me. Which he did, a sparkle in his eyes telling me he might like to try it too.
The impact of the landing makes me grunt and I laugh out loud, look up at the wood platform swaying in the air three stories above me. I move out from underneath it and slowly let the line play out until the platform clunks down in front of me. Out of force of habit I tie the line off, even though the rope's slack and the platform's now resting on the bottom floor of the house.
It's quiet here, a place of still air and dark gloom. The light that shines so brightly on the second and third floors seems to wane before it reaches this low. Away from the center of the room everything belongs to the shadows.
I force myself into the dark and run my hands over the rough stone wall until I feel the light switch. Its click echoes in the stillness and, for a moment, when the dim lights come on, the bare bulbs pushing light into all the shadows, I lose touch of the giddiness that has overtaken me and feel silly, a little ashamed, to be standing naked and barefoot in this place, still splattered with her blood.
This floor is the dark underbelly of the house and I know too well the secrets it holds. Here Don Henri built three supply rooms and eight prison cells. Long ago I turned one of the supply rooms into a freezer where we store our meats. Another one holds dry goods and household necessities, while the third serves as a place to store linens and Father's bales of hay.
The cells are another matter. In the old days Don Henri used them to punish his enemies and to hold humans for his future meals.
I prefer to keep the cell doors open. Shut, their iron bars remind me of the terror and suffering that lay behind them. One of the cells serves as my laundry now, another as a tool shop. Five of the other six still function as holding cells for those times that Father or I have found it convenient to keep one or more of our captives alive.
My nose wrinkles at the thought of the winos and beggars that, whenever no other choices present themselves, I occasionally must seize and bring home. "Those are the ones who'll never be missed," Father always insists. But he is never the one who has to cage, feed and clean them until the alcohol and drugs leave their wretched bodies and the regimen of good, healthy meals finally make them fit to eat.
Of course no alcohol or drug recovery program can boast of the cure rate my hospitality generates. I chuckle at the thought. A hundred percent of my guests have given up their addictions and not one of them has ever had the opportunity to backslide.
I pass the sixth and smallest cell. While it appears to be like the others, as Don Henri intended, in truth it's nothing but a passageway to a secret corridor and the secret chambers built under the house.
Beyond the cells I reach the third storeroom. There I load a wooden barrow with a pitchfork and four bales of hay as well as sheets and pillow cases for my bed. I also bring an empty burlap bag.
The woman returns to my thoughts and I alternately imagine a raven-haired Latin woman or a cocoa-brown island beauty-each with piercing, emerald-green eyes. I wonder what she'll be like as I roll the barrow onto the platform, then step off and operate the winch that raises the hoist to the second floor.
Father has barely changed position since I left. The sight of Maria's bones lying on the hay near him remind me of the night before and I feel a small twinge of regret. I try not to think about her as I gather up the bones and place them in the burlap bag.
I roll the barrow into the room and unload the hay in a different corner of the room, and use the pitchfork to spread it out and fluff it up. Then I turn my attention to the old creature still lost in sleep on the other side of the room. "Father, " I mindspeak, "I've made you a new bed. Come, get up for a minute so I can clean out your old one."
Father snores, says nothing, moves not a muscle. Since I've no intention of carrying him, I shake him until he finally flutters his eyelids and manages a solitary thought. "Peter, why must you torment me so?"
But he lets me help him up and guide him to his new bed before he returns to his dreams once more.
I make no effort to be quiet as I use the fork to scoop up all the old bloodstained hay and load it and the burlap bag onto the wooden barrow. The barrow squeaks as I roll it out of Father's chamber and onto the platform. I grin at the noise. A caravan of gypsies could celebrate a wedding in this room without disturbing Father's rest.
Once the platform has been hoisted to the third floor, I roll the barrow close to the great hearth and shovel forkfuls of hay over the glowing embers. Fire flares up and consumes the hay almost as quickly as I heave it forward. The brief eruption of heat feels good against my bare skin and I realize the day has turned cool.
I look out the window at the darkening sky and frown. Whitecaps run southward, chased by the angry chill of a north wind. Trees bend before its force. Their leaves may point south to where my love must live, I think, but the north wind that moves them brings me nothing.
It's the kiss of the south wind I yearn for as I turn my back on the window, busy myself returning the barrow, the pitchfork, the burlap bag and the platform to the bottom floor-thinking, how strange that my future, the discovery of my love, could be so dependent on the vagaries of something as simple as the wind.
I watch the Twelve O'Clock News to see if there's any mention of Maria's disappearance. I need to know if anyone saw her leave with me, if there's any alert for the boat. I don't expect there will be any, but still, when the newscast ends without any mention of her, I feel my muscles relax. All contacts, such as the evening I had with Maria, involve some risk. Father has said it many times, we are safest when we are invisible. Safe or not, I decide to rid myself of the boat tonight, at the same time as I dispose of Maria's bones.
I wash the floor clean of all traces of blood, put fresh linens on the bed and then I treat myself to a long hot shower. Afterward I lie down, clean and warm under my covers, and allow myself to nap.
The wind howls through my windows and cold rain slashes the island when I awake. I jump from my bed and rush to slam the room's windows and doors shut. "Damn," I mutter, thinking of the open windows on the third floor and in Father's chamber.
I pull on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers, then run up the staircase to the third floor, shake my head at the cold remnants of the fire in the hearth, the dampness sprayed by the wind throughout the room.
"Peter!" Father calls me as I pull the last window shut. "Come close my windows, the rain's coming in."
"Father, you can close them yourself," I say as I look around the room, and make sure everything's secure. Outside, rain drums on the windowpanes.
"Peter, you opened the windows. You damn well can close them."
I grin at Father's intransigence, walk slowly down the stairs to his room.
"About time," he says when I enter. He coughs and wheezes for my benefit, watches as I rush around the room slamming doors, shutting windows. "Start afire too," he instructs. "Take the chill out of the air."
I stack logs in the fireplace on the exterior wall, grab a few handfuls of hay from Father's bedding to serve as kindling. The fire will soon make the room intolerably hot, but I know Father won't care. Age has made him sensitive to cold and far too fond of heat. I strike a match and watch the hay catch fire, the flames blossom and lick around the logs.
" Why haven't you told me about our women and the scent they give off?" I mindspeak Father.
He sighs and turns on his bedding. "Why make you wait for what might not come? Why have you search for what might not be there?"
"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.
The light illuminates a round chamber, no more than ten paces in circumference, leading to another dark corridor on the other side and flanked by two, steel-plated wood doors, each chained shut and padlocked.
As always I feel uneasy here, knowing that every man who worked on these rooms was slaughtered as soon as they were completed. I turn to the door on my right and dial the lock's combination. Years ago, after Father ceased to visit this floor, I removed the ancient locks Don Henri had installed and replaced them with modern, stainless-steel combination padlocks, both to forgo the need for keys and to save me from any further time wasted on struggling to unlock the aged and rusted devices.
The door swings open and I can't help but gawk at the riches inside, chest after chest brimming with gold and silver jewelry. Boxes containing Rolexs, Cartiers, Omegas and Ebals. Ancient gold and silver ingots stacked knee-high near the far wall. Piles of twenty-dollar bills taken from drug runners who'd suffered a fate far worse from us than they would ever have encountered from the DEA.
Maria's few pieces of jewelry look paltry and cheap alongside the wealth they join. Still I drop all of it in a chest, the gold four-leaf clover resting on the top and proceed on, locking the door, extinguishing the light and entering the other narrow, dark corridor.
Stumbling occasionally over the rough stones lining the floor, I follow the passageway's contours as it curves, then dips, then rises, then ends-another wooden door blocking any further progress. I listen to the wind and the rain outside and I smile, knowing I'll soon be out in it.
It takes only a few moments of fumbling in the dark to pull on the yellow slicker and matching yellow overalls of my foul-weather gear. I throw the ancient bolt on the door, push it open and, leaving Don Henri's escape tunnel, I breathe in the clean cool night's air. I revel in the beauty of the storm as rain beats in my face and lightning illuminates the heavens.
The tunnel opens in the bushes just a few yards from the dock and I pause to add some large rocks to the bones inside the burlap bag, then I sprint to the dock where my Grady White tosses and pitches. Thunder cracks somewhere in the night and I laugh. The seas will be furious and dangerous in their anger. No right-minded person will be out in such weather.
I throw the burlap bag into the cockpit of the Grady White, then make my way to the Chris Craft and release its dock lines, tying its bowline to the Grady White's stern cleat.
Taking my boat's wheel, I fire up the Yamahas and head out the channel, towing the Chris Craft behind me. I gasp when I clear the protection of the island and the full force of the wind hits me. The Grady White's wheel fights my control. Waves crash over the bow. Salt spray and driving rain hammer my face and eyes.
I push the throttle forward even more and concentrate on guiding the boat through the twists and turns of the channel. The Chris Craft follows, fighting its towline, crashing into waves, skittering sideways from their impact.
Taking the last turn of the channel at full speed, turning the wheel hard to the right, I yank the Chris Craft out of the channel, take it over the coral rocks lurking just under the surface. The Grady White quivers when the other boat hits rock, then slows, motors whining, as it pulls the Chris Craft across the coral, ripping and splintering the wooden boat's bottom.
The rain is so dense that I can barely make out the Fowey Rock lighthouse's beacon a few miles away. I pray that the Chris Craft doesn't sink until I'm well past it, out in the deep water where I always dispose of my family's secrets.
Besides, I find I'm enjoying myself, fighting to keep the Grady White under control, steering my way from wave to wave. Fear isn't a possibility. Should the boat founder or I get knocked overboard, I can always change shape and take to the air.
On the edge of the Gulfstream, the waves tower over my boat, threatening to crash down on me. I wait until the Grady White clears the top of one giant wave, then I rush back and cut the Chris Craft's line before we hit the bottom of the trough. The boat disappears behind me, sinking as I guide the Grady White to the top of the next wave.
I repeat the maneuver two waves later, this time throwing the burlap bag containing Maria's bones into the angry sea. I'm too busy to watch it sink and very glad to have my attention required elsewhere.
The run back to the island goes easier. With nothing to tow, the Grady White responds to the lightest touch. Running with the wind behind us reduces its ferocity, lessens the impact of the driving rain and I have time to think of Maria and allow myself to mourn her passing.
Against the reality of her gruesome death, the image of a faraway love's embrace seems even more illusory to me than before. Had Father not confirmed the probability of her existence, I would probably now be assuming that what happened wasn't the result of an airborne scent but rather a moment's madness. It wouldn't be the first time I felt my existence was insane. Certainly no human would think it otherwise.
Near the island, the shock of Father's words sink in and, for the first time in my life, I consider living without him. It makes me ache inside, a hollow empty pain that tears at me and sears my brain. I want to cry out against any thought of it but I know Father's right. For the love of me he's lived longer than he's wanted and, in return, I must let him go without complaint.
I must focus instead on finding the woman, the mate my blood requires. The thought of her brings back the memory of the scent of cinnamon and musk floating in the evening air. My heartbeat quickens and my nostrils flare. To my shame I forget about the undeserved death, so recent, so sad, of an innocent girl.
For the moment I forget Father's words too, his imminent and desired demise. The recollection of the distant female's scent overtakes me and-no matter the rain, the wind, the tousled, frothing seas that batter me-I give in to the fantasies the remembrance brings.