If only, I think, I could busy myself with these things. But there's no priest for me to turn to, no ritual I can embrace-even Father's estate has long since been transferred to my name, his death faked years before and recorded then by our family's attorneys.

After dark, at least, I'll be able to carry Father's body to the island where my mother's buried and keep my promise to lay him down beside his beloved. Until then there's nothing to do but wait and surrender to the pain.

Dark comes late this time of year and I spend the day wandering the grounds and the veranda, hating the bright light of day, the white sails billowing far off at sea, the gulls soaring in the sky, rupturing the quiet of the day with their raucous caws.

I throw off my clothes as soon as night falls, change shape in the dark shadows near the walls of the house. Truly my father's son now, I spread my wings to the evening air and leap into the sky.

The rushing air embraces me and I flex the great muscles on my back, push huge quantities of air with each beat of my wings. Ordinarily the mere act of flying fills me with joy, but tonight sorrow and anger consume me. Higher, faster, I spiral over my island. I want-I need to feed, to taste life as it drains away, and I want to taste it soon. I have no patience for caution this night. I descend in a long gentle curve as I search the surrounding waters for prey.

A lone fisherman, foolish enough to anchor his thirteen-foot Boston Whaler on the ocean side of Sand Key catches my attention. He shifts his weight with each passing swell, trying to maintain his balance as he casts his rod, even as I wheel in the air above him, unseen.

I fold my wings tight to my body and drop, gathering speed with every foot of my descent, reveling in the roar of the air rushing around me. Just before I crash into the sea, I snap my wings out, struggle to keep them extended as I battle the air to stop my fall, the momentum of my dive jetting me forward now, gliding low enough to feel the waves brush my underbelly, my taloned claws unclenched, ready to grab, to rip, to tear.

He sees me at the last moment-a dark apparition rushing toward him, out of the blackness of the night-and freezes. Good, I think, I want him to see the coming of his death.

A single beat of my wings raises me into position and I strike, my rear talons digging into flesh, jerking my prey from the boat as I glide past. The fisherman is so shocked, he still grasps his rod, the line trailing behind us as I soar skyward.

Other nights I would regret the death of an innocent being, but tonight I feel no guilt, extend no pity. I climb into the sky and, on a whim, release my prey. He screams, finally dropping his rod, flailing the air with his legs and arms as he falls. Laughing, ravenous, I strike him in midair, open his midsection with one stroke of one claw, grab him with another, holding him and feeding even before his life fades away. I consume him entirely in flight, discarding what little remains of him miles out, over the Gulfstream.

Fighting the languor that always comes after feeding, I fly home to gather up my father and carry him to his wife's side.

The island has changed little since Father and I last visited it. Stones, grass and weeds, a few clumps of scrub brush and even fewer scrawny pine trees are all that break the monotony of its sandy existence.

Clutching Father beneath me, I have to fly over the entire length and width of the island four times before I find the pile of stones we placed to mark Mother's grave. It's on the highest point of land-a wind-built dune on the northern quadrant of the island, barely twelve feet higher than the beach.

I land there, gently place Father down and survey Mother's resting place. Grass and weeds have overgrown any sign that a grave had been dug there. Only the stones, carefully piled to mark the grave, remain as testimony to our grief.

A few of them have fallen and I place them back, on top of the pile, and sit and try to remember my mother.

Funny, I think, when I realize all my images of her are of her human shape. I try to remember her in her natural state… but nothing comes. Even when we found Mother on this island, she had changed her shape back to human before she died, bleeding and gasping in the sand.

"She wanted to be human," Father told me. "She preferred to live in that form."

I wish now she hadn't. Our people keep no paintings, no photographs of ourselves in our natural forms and I have nowhere to turn, to know exactly what one of our women looks like.

Father had laughed at me when I told him of this worry.

"Peter," he said. "Trust your blood. You'll recognize her as soon as you see her. And believe me"-he chuckled-"you'll know just what to do."

I hope so. My sigh seems louder to me than the ocean sounds filling the island air. Mother had insisted on me being schooled with humans, just as she was, and what did it get me? I'm not even sure how to pursue one of my own women.

I dig the grave without tools, using my strong rear legs and clawed feet to shovel the earth. Then I lay Father's carcass at the bottom of the hole and cover him with dirt. I say no words, sing no prayers. What is buried below is a deserted carcass, skin and bones.

My father once ruled kingdoms. He defeated whole armies singlehandedly. For over a century he commanded a pirate fleet that terrorized the Caribbean. I shake my head at the disturbed soil I've pushed over him, the final resting place of Don Henri DelaSangre, and hope his spirit's gone elsewhere.

Afterward I search for rocks and build a marker for him, just a little higher than my mother's. Then I sit at the foot of their graves, stare at the stone piles, the surrounding land and the restless sea beyond it. Far north, on the horizon, the sky glows faintly from the lights on Bimini Island. Otherwise, there's no sign of man anywhere in sight.

A good thing, I decide. A good place for them both to be buried. Don Henri's last kingdom is perhaps his smallest, but his to rule over in perpetuity.

With Father gone, I'm left with no company but the wind, the waves and the island's roving pack of dogs. I go days without eating, wandering from empty room to empty room. The solitude torments me, disrupts my sleep. Father said she wouldn't come to term again until July and I wonder if I can wait that long.

Just to have voices and noises in the house I turn on the television in my room and let it play twenty-four hours a day. I do the same with the FM stereo radio in the great room on the third floor. But rather than allow it to comfort me, I ignore the cacophony and stare into the shadows for hours.

I take to inspecting each room of the house each day, dusting furniture, refolding linens. When nothing's left to be done, I turn my attention to the closets, sobbing when I open the door to Father's and find his and Mother's musty and mildewed clothes. It takes days for me to carry all of it to the third floor and burn it in the open hearth.

More days pass and I finally take myself outside, working for the first time in years in Mother's garden, removing weeds, pruning growth, admiring the exotic herbs she planted-the yellow-green flowers of the Dragon's Tear plant, the deep purple shade of the Death's Rose. If I can't find the girl, I think, I can always crush the purple petals of the rose and brew a tea from it. Father told me the death that comes from it is very peaceful.

The sun's rays and the ocean breezes seem to have a salutary effect on me and, after a day's work outside, my stomach reminds me how long it's been since I've eaten. I've no desire to change shape and fly off on a hunt but, thanks to the dog pack and their constant production of litters, there's always more than enough live meat on the island.