"You sure I can't get one of the machine guns?" Santos says.

"I'm sure."

He wanders the veranda, collects one of the spent blunderbusses, takes it to the arms room for ball and powder and returns to load it within my view. "We're having a duel, is that it?"

I nod. "I promised you a fair chance."

"What if you lose?"

"I won't," I say, thinking how easy it is to read his movements.

"You never know, DelaSangre, you never know. I almost had you tonight, twice, and you know it."

"Just load the damn thing."

When he finishes ramming the load home, he looks at me and shrugs. "Well, it wasn't all bad… Another time, another place, who knows? After all, you thought we were friends, didn't you?"

Santos cocks the rail gun, primes the flash pan and aims at me.

It shames me to realize I once thought some sort of friendship had formed between us. I raise the pistol, cock and aim it. "My kind and your kind can never be friends."

"And what kind are yours?" he asks.

I look into his eyes, wait for Santos to signal his intent. He doesn't turn away. He doesn't flinch. His bravery earns him the right to a response, I think.

But Santos doesn't wait for my reply. He sucks in a steadying breath and, sure of what that signals, I squeeze my finger on my pistol's trigger-just an instant before he squeezes his.

My gun flares at the same moment I spit out the answer to his question. "Dragons."

Since Elizabeth's death, Henri and I have lived alone. I find little reason to leave my island, to seek any other company. My son's very presence, his constant need for my attention make it impossible for me to succumb to loneliness and grief. For this I'm grateful.

At first the thought of raising a child by myself terrifies me. I have no background for this, no training. Elizabeth knew what to do. Her mother taught her from birth just what was expected of her. "She even allowed me to help take care of Chloe, after she was born," Elizabeth told me. "Babies are easy."

Only childbirth itself frightened her. "It's when our women most often die," she said.

I call Arturo Gomez and tell him a much-modified story of my son's birth, Jeremy's perfidy and Elizabeth's death at the hands of him and his henchmen. "At least, Henri came to no harm," I say. The Latin offers to rush me books on human childcare and, out of curiosity, I allow it.

But as I read Spock and Lear and the others-during the times Henri sleeps-I shake my head over and over again. I end up disregarding and discarding all of the books. Mine is not a human child. Mine has different needs.

Elizabeth had laughed when I suggested buying a bassinet for the baby. I understand now just why. After all, no manufacturer has ever designed diapers with a dragon-child in mind. I find that hay-as she suggested-makes the perfect bed for my sleeping son. It conforms to his sleeping shape. When fouled, it's simple to replace.

Arturo offers to find a nursemaid for the child. I stifle a laugh at the suggestion. The Latin knows we're different, but he has no idea just what we are. Besides, I know no one else can ever take care of my child as well as I can.

Even if there were a way for a nursemaid to cope with such a creature as my son, I wouldn't surrender the closeness Henri and I have. With Henri, I can share his thoughts. When he cries from hunger, I can sense his pangs. When fear grips him, I can see what scares him. When he looks at me, the love that pours from him almost staggers me. And when I look at him-especially when he sleeps, quiet and innocent and oh so vulnerable to all the dangers of the world-the love I feel for him brings tears to my eyes.

I find it ironic that had Elizabeth lived, she would have been the one to tend to our child's needs, to grow as close to him as I have. In a way, her death has brought me an unintended blessing. Not that I wouldn't undo it in a moment if I could.

Not a day goes by that I don't visit her grave-the ground still bare where I buried her, adjacent to her beloved garden. I report to her the growth of our child, pledge I will keep my promise. I will teach Henri about his mother.

I tend to Elizabeth's garden too, make sure all is cared for as she would have wished. When Henri grows older, I will bring him here often and tell him stories about her.

I don't know when I'll tell him how she died. He certainly will never see anything to make him wonder about it. Within days after Elizabeth's death, no reminders of her disaster remained. The bodies of Jorge Santos, Casey Morton and the other humans now decay somewhere in the depths of the Gulfstream.

Every remnant of their blood and Elizabeth's has long since been eliminated, the veranda sanded and refinished.

Even the cannon that took my bride's life has been discarded. It now lies rusting at the bottom of our island's tiny harbor.

Tindall's Grand Banks is lost somewhere at sea, wherever its motors and the heading I programmed into its autopilot delivered it. When last I saw it, the empty craft was following a direction that should have taken it between Cuba and the Bahamas-out into the vast Atlantic.

No sign of Jeremy, of course, has ever been found. Not that anyone seems to miss him. As soon as the Coast Guard search was called off, his wife and sons sued in court to have him declared legally dead. Arturo says they're already arguing over his estate.

Good old Arturo. He and my new attorney-Jeremy's oldest son, Ian-handled all the paperwork expediting Elizabeth's death certificate and arranged for all the necessary papers to record Henri's birth. A new will was written, money shifted and trust funds set up. Thanks to their machinations, within days after my child's birth, his future was secure.

The future becomes a very important thing after a child is born. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, making plans. All children, I suppose, want to correct their parents' mistakes by doing differently themselves in the rearing of their own children. In this I'm no exception.

I've come to agree with Father that Mother erred when she insisted I be so exposed to humans and their ways. I spent far too many years wishing I had been born human, yearning for their company, wanting their approval.

I hate that it took so long for me to embrace my heritage. Yet I don't want Henri to grow up like his mother, bereft of all exposure or interest in art and music and literature. Humans may never be our equals, but there's much they create that I want my son to be able to appreciate.

He will never be sent to school with their kind. If necessary, I'll teach him myself on our island. I want him to grow up, proud to be what he is, yet aware of all the world has to offer.

It takes until Henri's third month of life for me to be sure just how I intend to pursue our future. For his own good, I decide, he should have a mother to nurture him too. Most certainly, it will also serve me if I find another wife.

Human women no longer hold any fascination for me. Father told me long ago, "Once you've experienced a woman of our own kind, you'll never again want to touch a human female in that way." I find I agree. But finding a woman of the blood is never easy. The thought of the long search it will require fills me with dread.

My son, on the other hand, fills me with joy. Already he has grown enough so that some of his thoughts form almost as words. During his waking times he fills the air and my mind with an endless stream of baby talk. His scales are still baby soft, his color a light tan overall. He has yet to shift completely into a human shape, but when he sees me in mine, he tries.

Sometimes the results leave me laughing, the infant half-human in appearance, with a tail protruding in the wrong spot or an ear strategically misplaced. I open my mind to him and gently think him back to his natural shape. It melts my heart when one day he forms an entire baby face, complete with a cleft like mine, but far smaller, on its chin.