The Dragon Delasangre by Alan F. Troop

shoulder. “She’s most probably in the Caribbean. The wind will shift again and, if she’s untaken, you can follow her scent.”
    â€œUntaken?” 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. . . .”
    â€œPeter,” 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.”
    â€œAnd 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.”
    â€œAll the more reason for me to stay with you now.”
    â€œAll 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.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œNo!” 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.”
    â€œWhy 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 Curaçao. 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?
    â€œWe were all privateers. Each of us carried Letters of Marque—Blood’s from England, Sang’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.”
    â€œAnd you think their families are still on those islands?”
    â€œMost 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.”
    â€œIt’s that easy?”
    Father grins, showing every one of his pointed yellowed teeth. “Easy?” He cackles