Dragon Moon Read Free Page B

he says, folds his arms and pouts.
    I smile at him. “When you’re bigger, we’ll hunt together. For now, eat your food. There will be more later, when I come back after you’re asleep.”
    Henri, still pouting, looks away from his plate.
    I ignore his momentary food strike and make a show of cutting and eating my meat. In only a few minutes the heavy aroma of the blood on his plate and my feeding in front of him makes him too hungry to resist eating any longer.
    After Henri falls asleep, I go out on the veranda and walk over to its ocean side. In the darkness, a dog barks. Otherwise, only the waves rushing at the shore, the wind rustling through the trees break the silence of the night.
    A southeast breeze, I think, normal for this time of year. My mind turns to Chloe, living on that island so far south of mine. There’s little chance the girl has come of age so soon. Still, I turn my face toward the southeast, sniff in the salt smell the wind carries. If Chloe has reached her maturity, her scent will surely be on the air. Thankfully, the breeze carries no hint of cinnamon and musk, the telltale aroma of a female of my kind in heat.
    Grinning, I put my arms out, luxuriate in the caress of the wind. “It’s time,” I say out loud. I take off my shirt, my pants, my underwear, my socks and shoes, and stand naked on the oak deck of the veranda.
    Flaring my nostrils, I breathe in the night air again, puffing my chest as it fills my lungs — the oxygen energizing my blood cells — my heart speeding its contractions, hammering in my chest as it pumps great bursts of blood throughout my body. I look up to the dark sky, the gray clouds scudding overhead, the pinpoint sparkles of the stars, the dull glow of a half-moon. I belong up there, I think.
    I will myself to change, groaning at the pleasure/pain of stretching skin, the sweet agony of growing bones. Once I was ashamed of what I was. Once I wished to live only as a human. But now I welcome my metamorphosis to my natural form. I draw in a deep breath of the salt-tinged night air and let out a slow growl.
    â€œI am Peter DelaSangre, son of Don Henri DelaSangre,” I say into the night. My skin ripples, hardening, turning to dark green armored scales everywhere but my underbelly. Beige scales form there, double thick to protect me from any attacks from below. I grimace as my back swells, then splits, my wings emerging, growing, unfolding, my tail stretching out behind me.
    My lips compress as my face narrows and elongates and my teeth lengthen and turn to fangs. My body stretches and thickens until I’m more than twice the size of my human form. My hands and feet reshape themselves into taloned claws and I groan at the pain and pleasure of it all.
    Clasping and unclasping my claws, I stretch my wings to their full span — almost twice as wide as my height. I beat them once and then again, fanning air before me, switching my thick tail from side to side, stretching muscles that have rested too long — until every fiber of my being longs to fly.
    With one bound I take to the air. The sky belongs to me. The night is my domain. I roar into the dark.
    I pity those who have never experienced such a moment.
    Each stroke of my wings takes me higher. As always before a hunt, I bank and circle Caya DelaSangre, looking down at the thin white lines of waves moving in the gloom, approaching my island’s shore — the white froth as they break against the pale shadow of the beach.
    The rest of the island shows itself only as a black mass floating in a slightly less dark sea. Only the warm, yellow glow of the lights I left on in the great room on the third floor of the house gives evidence of the island’s habitation.
    I spiral over my home, soaring higher, the air growing cold around me, the bright grid of the city lights of Coral Gables and Miami appearing, stretching inland to my west. Boats lights pierce the darkness of the