Darting forward, I jab out, rake his forehead with the one talon, backing up before he can see just what has injured him.

The man's face fogs with confusion. He gasps, and staggers back as blood wells from the gash and runs down his forehead. "He cut me!" he yells to his friends in the bushes. "He cut me!"

I laugh again, push him out of my way and walk on. Already my finger has shaped back. A small fleck of his blood remains on my fingernail. I sniff it, recoil at its smell and wipe my finger clean on the leaf of a nearby bush. The man's body is riddled with drugs and alcohol.

I'd rather eat offal.

The wind has risen with the night and, across the bay, waves jump in sympathy. No challenge at all for the deep-vee hull of my Grady White. Twin two-hundred horsepower Yamahas thunder from the stern as the boat dances from white crest to white crest.

The night is too black for most men's eyes, the water and wind rough enough to keep most boats in port. But I know there will always be a few fishermen too foolish to stay at home. "It's time to fly!" I shout into the night wind. "Time to hunt!"

The mugger has roused me from my languor; my stomach's no longer so full. It's one of the limitations my people have. Changing takes energy. Even such a simple adjustment as I used in my defense burned as many calories as running several hundred feet.

But no matter, I think… before dawn, Father and I will feast better than we have in months. Father will be glad. He's complained for weeks about the lack of fresh meat.

A pale light bobs in the water a few miles to the south of Blood Key. I kill my navigational lights, turn the Grady White and race toward it.

Their boat is anchored just north of Boca Chita Key. I approach close enough to make out the size of it, the dark shapes of two men hunched over their rods. The boat can't measure more than fourteen feet. The men constantly have to adjust their positions to cope with the pitching of their small craft.

I wonder at the wisdom of spending such a rough evening in such a puny craft for the dubious pleasure of hooking a few fish by the mouth. But I'm glad they have. If theirs was a larger, more expensive boat, I would have to bypass them. It's one of Father's rules. He has many when it comes to humans. "Never take rich ones, if you can avoid it. Their absence never goes unnoticed. The poorer the prey, the less likely the chance of retribution."

Intent as the two men are on their fishing and as loud as the wind and water are, I doubt they have any sense of my proximity. One brings in a fish, rebaits his hook and casts again. Good, I think, they have the look of men committed to a long night of fishing. I turn away and rush for home. When I return, it will be a simple thing, both to take them and to upend their craft so they will look as if they were lost to the sea.

The island is a black presence silhouetted against a darker sea and sky. I maneuver the turns of the channel at full speed, caroming from wave to wave, missing the sharp rocks below by inches. There are no markers, no buoys to show the way. No matter. I know it as well as I know my name.

"Father!" I mindspeak. "Wake up! It's time for a hunt!"

I have to repeat myself four times before he answers. "And about time too," he says. "Will you bring me a young one?"

"You know better than that," I say.

I can sense his disappointment, even though I'm still hundreds of yards from shore. It's an old disagreement. No matter how sweet they may be, I refuse to take children. Just like so many on the mainland refuse to eat veal, I insist on my preferences.

Father snorts at the thought of it. "You are what you are," he says. "When will you accept that?"

"You didn't grow up with them. You didn't go to their schools."

"We only do what we must." Father sighs. "We're no different from the lions that roam the Serengeti. We just happen to favor the taste of man."

"That doesn't mean I have to eat their young," I say.

"Don't forget. We were rulers of great kingdoms once, slayers of thousands," Father says, "Ours is a history older than the age of magic-"

I've heard this lecture all my life. I interrupt, and parrot back the words he's spoken to me so many times before, "Had we slain a thousand times more of them, we still couldn't have stemmed the explosive growth of humanity. And no matter how strong our power, no matter how long we lived, we were never numerous enough."

"Quiet!" Father says. "Don't bother me anymore until you have something to bring me."

I grin at his dismissal, guide the boat into the narrow channel that slices into our island and then empties into a . round lagoon-the two together looking uncannily like a keyhole from the air.

As soon as I tie off the Grady White's dock lines, I strip off my clothes, leaving them piled on the dock. I stand for a few moments and let the night wind caress me, play with my hair. I hold up my hand before me and marvel at its softness, the frailty of the human form.

How such weak beings could ever end up ruling the earth still amazes me. Any one of my ancestors could kill hundreds of them in a single skirmish. But, I know, as Father taught me, once the first of us was brought down in battle, mankind lost its fear of us. So what that it might take a thousand men to kill one of ours? There were always thousands more to try.

"In the end," Father said, "by the time of the beginning of written history, only a few dozen of our families were left. They learned how to survive in secret and became changelings and night slayers. They called themselves 'People of the Blood.' Mankind called them 'Dragons.'"

I draw in a deep breath of the salt-tinged night air, let out a slow growl as I will my body to change. Welcoming the pain, the almost pleasure that comes with it, I twist and stretch-my skin tightening, turning to armored scales, my torso lengthening and thickening until I'm more than twice as large as my human form.

My back swells, then splits to allow my wings to unfold. Taloned claws replace hands and feet. Fangs replace teeth. A powerful tail grows behind me.

My heart hammers out each beat. My lungs pump great quantities of air. Saliva fills my mouth. I think only of the hunt to come. The excitement of it, the memory of the taste of fresh prey overwhelms the possibility of any other thoughts.

I stand on my hindquarters, spread my wings to full length and block the wind with their strength. Opening and closing my claws, sweeping my tail from side to side, I run forward, take to the air with a few mighty beats of my wings.

The small boat still bobs in place near Boca Chita Key, the two men hunched over their fishing rods. I circle far above them, letting the winds keep me aloft while I watch and wait.

One of the men yanks on his rod, stands as he tries to reel in a fish, the rod almost doubling over, the boat pitching and yawing as the fisherman moves. The other man puts down his rod and shifts his position to compensate for his friend's activities.

I spiral down, gathering speed as I near the water, zooming forward just above the wave tops, rushing toward the boat from the rear, the wind whistling around me, salt spray coating my scales.

Intent on the battle with the fish, neither man seems to notice my approach. Unwilling to leave behind a bloody boat, I land just behind them so the impact and my weight upset the craft.

I take to the air again as the boat flips, the fisherman dropping his rod, both men shouting as they fall into the water.

Once again I circle above them. I wait until one man attempts to climb up on the boat's overturned hull. I spiral down toward him, snatching him with a clawed foot, slicing his throat with the slash of the other, carrying his still body to Boca Chita's abandoned beach.

I place the body on the sand, pause as the rich aroma of the dead man's fresh blood fills the air around him. I know I should return to the hunt immediately, find the other man before he works out a way to escape, but my stomach convulses with hunger. Lowering my head, I rip a chunk of meat from the body with my teeth and gulp it down.