Southern Fried Dragon (8 page)

“They moved camp, ‘tis all.”

“Moved where?” asked another patron. Everyone went quiet, as if Joseph was a storyteller, guiding the story to its mysterious conclusion.

“Fort Sumter, in the bay.”

“All them Federal soldiers jumped ship and landed at
Fort Sumter. I swear on a stack a bibles that’s where they went, and in haste.”

“
What? You’re daft, old man.”

“
I agree with Lawrence, Joseph. That old pile of rocks isn’t complete. It cannot be defended.”

“It is a better defensive post than Moultrie
, and a danger to all of Charleston. I bet it has dozens of cannons planted in the unfinished walls facing this very building.”

   The pitcher shattered on the tavern’s wide plank floor. All eyes turned on Dru. She shook uncontrollably. Nerves and anger warred inside her shifter body. How could these men laugh and joke while others prepared to fight? Perhaps die?

“Are you okay, lass?” Joseph appeared at her elbow.

“I am fine, sir. It slipped. Sit yerself back down and I’ll bring you some of Maggie’s famous southern fried chicken.” Dru rushed to the kitchen, all the while worrying about Shaw.

* * * * *

“The secessionist’s rag-tag troops captured
Fort Pinckney last night,” Major Anderson said.

A rumble of unease drifted through the crowd. Several men strained to gaze over the battlements toward the fort on a small island off the coast of Charleston.

“The southern militia’s blatant seizure of United States property is only the first. War is coming, and we must be prepared. No one is to leave the fort. No fishing except from the rocks. No use of boats for any reason. Do not call out or respond to any passing boaters.”

Shaw groaned. How could he visit Dru? He’d planned to leave tonight to let her know he now lived at Fort Sumter. His body ached, and his palms grew sweaty each time her image filled his head. Sometimes, when the breeze, filled with the tang of the sea, wafted over his face he thought of her. When he drank his ale amid his fellow soldiers, he listened for her laughter.

“Your orders, sir?” Shaw asked.

“Keep sentries posted, have the guns ready, and continue building up the walls. Oh, and don’t eat all the rations. Relief supplies will not arrive for quite some time. We had no need for any shipments, with Charleston so close.”

“You have sent word north?”

“I am sure the president is aware of our situation. Dismiss your men, Lieutenant.”

Shaw gave the orders and turned away from his commander. He headed toward Fort Sumter’s battlement, the section facing Charleston’s wharves. As the day passed, he returned every couple of hours to the same spot, the closest point between him and Dru. The yearning for her had turned into a raw, burning need to taste her again. How cruel to find a woman like Dru and then be denied her love.

Love?

She liked him, obviously, and had welcomed him into her bed. But, had she fallen in love with him? He had no idea if she was an innocent maid, or a woman who invited all the tavern customers to her room. She had certainly pointed him toward a convenient exit when a knock on the door interrupted their lovemaking.

Shaw rubbed his bruised backside at the memory. He pulled his focus away from Charleston and headed to the mess hall.

After a dinner of watered-down potato soup and stale bread, Shaw walked the southern wall and stared out over a sandbar covered with birds. He had to squint, since the sky darkened quickly in December. He kept walking until he spied the lights of Charleston. Shadows enveloped him, as his thoughts grew as dark as the night. Shaw reached in his uniform’s pocket, pulled out an apple, then tossed it high in the air. It disappeared. 

Squinting through the darkness above him,
Shaw saw an ominous shape that hovered, then grew closer. He turned, and ran.

* * * * *

I scared him
, thought Dru as she gathered her wings and dove toward the surface of the water, well below the battlements. Chomping on the apple, she dipped and rose again, scaring several seabirds on their way back to their nesting grounds. The look of fear that had marred Shaw’s handsome features concerned her, but beneath it he looked hale and hardy.

She came to Fort Sumter in order to see if the alarming news she had overheard at the inn proved true. Finding Fort Moultrie smoking and deserted, how else could she discover what had happened?

She flapped her wings then caught a chilly updraft. Shaw looked well, though a bit befuddled. What went through his head while he stood alone, his attention locked on Charleston? His gaze hadn’t wavered. How else had she slipped in and stolen the fruit? Then, he screamed.

At me.

His obvious terror reminded Dru why she had kept her existence secret her entire life. Scottish mythology was ripe with nonsensical stories. Yet, the truth loomed. She and her kind existed, and were very much alive. Could Shaw Stenhouse accept the truth of her genetic makeup?

* * * * *

Shaw clutched a hand over
his mouth, and quieted another scream.
Unworthy of a military soldier, you fool.

Safe below the upper wall, he leaned
against the huge, bottle-shaped Rodman gun, but his heart rate refused to slow. He felt nauseated.

“Must be the potato soup.” Shaw laughed, then burped. What had he spied flying above him? Shaw gave his head a shake, closed his eyes, then sat on the cannon’s low base. Several soldiers walked by in the gathering darkness, and nodded. They should have saluted, but he wasn’t in the mood to pull rank.

Everyone around the fort acted nervous. Everything had changed when the major ordered them to abandon Fort Moultrie.

A queasy stomach, shaken nerves, and an apple-stealing creature of smoke filled him with a sense of foreboding. Not his idea of a nice evening. He’d rather stroll along the waterside with Miss Dru Little.

Had she appreciated his gift? He’d happened across a local fisherman rowing home past the fort. He had paid him to deliver his gift. Placing the bauble and coin in a stranger’s hands required a leap of faith. Had he gone to see Dru, or had he kept all for himself?

“If the kind-faced angler rowed straight home with his fish and Dru’s gift, would she think I’d forgotten her on the holiest day of the year?”

“Have faith,” someone whispered on the wind.

In his desperation, h
is mind played tricks on him. He couldn’t stop thinking of Dru’s kisses and how they warmed him from the inside out. Shaw’s body stirred as he recalled her dewy skin and bright blue eyes and how she had stared at his erection.

Shaw hardened, painfully, and squirmed.

Delving inside her sweetness wasn’t his intention that day, but he’d wanted nothing more once she’d pulled him inside her bedchamber and started to disrobe. “Too bad her employer knocked on the door.”

He laughed at the memory and how his erection had quickly turned flaccid. Then, he’d jumped out her window. Luckily, the sacks of potatoes had broken his fall.

* * * * *

No note, no word
. Dru had heard nothing from Shaw since she received his Christmas present. Even his gift had arrived in the hands of a stranger. Spying on him as he walked the battlements tortured her with the yearning to taste his mouth again. Did he miss her?

She had lived a long time, mainly around the islands off the coast of western Scotland. Familiar with war, and soldiers, Dru knew communication was possible. Why, then, had he forsaken her? She had taken to the air with a mixture of curiosity and unrequited lust for a soldier with long, dark hair. His Scottish roots were easy to see in his build and manner, though not in his American twang.

Dru knew little about the man besides what he'd revealed. Born in New York State to Scottish parents, he’d earned a commission in the army and was unmarried.

During lonely nights, after their intimate kisses, she’d toyed with the idea that he wanted a wife. Would she consider becoming a human male’s mate?

The concept seemed strange yet she had heard of many of her fellow Scottish dragons who had given up the freedom of the air, to take on the mantle of an earthbound human. Dru loved to fly. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had turned into a painful trial, but she had accomplished the journey alone, and had hoped she’d put an ocean between her and the horrid creature she named
The Black Dragon
.

Unfortunately, the bastard’s familiar scent popped up in the strangest places. Near the bookbinder’s shop
, and on the sea breeze that blew in from Charleston Harbor. From the corner of her eye, when flying high over the land, she once thought she'd spotted another dragon. She prayed her eyes had deceived her. She loved Charleston, her adopted home in America and didn’t want to leave. Besides, she loved Shaw.

I love Shaw Stenhouse.

The truth hit her in the snout. Smoke trickled from her nose, as her wings beat to take her higher into the night. The air, crisp with the threat of sleet, filled her lungs, but did nothing to calm her thoughts.

War would decimate Charleston. If she believed the men at the inn, the war would certainly grow in intensity. What would happen to Shaw?

* * * * *

Months of unease
passed in a country on the brink of war. April’s spring flowers bloomed while food supplies dwindled. Day after day, Shaw rose before the sun and put his men to work. He ate very little from the diminishing rations, and dreamed of Dru. The southerners who voted to secede from the Union, had elected Jefferson Davis as president of the confederate states.

“I know Davis, and the news is not good. As a former soldier, senator, and Secretary of War, he has the knowledge that might prolong this conflict,” Major Anderson said. News rarely made its way to the soldiers hunkered down at Fort Sumter, but several fishermen had taken pity on them.

“I hear tell he will rally his forces and sweep across the nation. I fear we are a convenient target.”

“I agree, Lieutenant. Here we sit, perched on a big rock within cannon range of secessionists. Only time will tell. Are the big guns ready?”

“Most are in position.” Shaw paused. “Food is running low, sir.”

Cannon fire had turned away the supply ship,
The Star of the West
, last January. His commander nodded and strode away toward his war office, which was in the section housing the officer’s quarters.

Shaw returned to his duties by way of the nearest stair tower
, while the image of Dru hovered in his head like a specter. He exited the covered stairway onto the left flank gun ports, behind the enlisted men’s barracks.

Staring out over the small expanse of water, he focused on the buildings in the distance. Past Castle Pinckney and across Charleston Harbor
, lived the woman who constantly filled his thoughts with a longing so intense, it drove all rational thoughts away. His body shook with lust.

Lust?

Or, with love for a woman who had captured his heart and turned him on his head?

Will I ever see Dru again?

Dru’s stomach growled.
The night was warm with the promise of spring and Dru was ravenous. Earthy scents of seaside gardens filled with honeysuckle in bloom filled her snout, but she wanted meat. Night after night, after she dined on seabirds. Not even Maggie’s fried chicken could keep her from returning to the fort, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shaw. Most nights, she returned to her bed, unfulfilled.

Word had circulated
about the eighty-five federal soldiers stationed at Fort Sumter. Most of the regiment kept out of sight, behind the cannon ports or barracks. A few ventured out to fish from the granite rocks strewn along the fort’s base or on the short wharf.

Nervous patrons had confirmed the news that many men and dozens of large cannons had sprung up at Fort Johnson and on Cummings point
. Dozens of men claimed to side with the southern militia, and warned of coming bloodshed.

Dru took to the air to see for herself. She surveyed the other forts under the cover of darkness
, and witnessed the hordes of men in strange faded gray uniforms preparing large cannons. Her dragon senses went on full alert during these flyovers. What she witnessed made her stomach clench with fear.

Not for herself. No one could hurt her, physically.

Well, not unless they shot her with a cannonball.

However, there was a definite chance these men, who pointed their weapons at Fort Sumter, would attack. In an attack waged with the deadly armaments she’d seen, how could Shaw survive?

I have to reach him. Protect him.

Dru had
yet to formulate a plan by the time she settled her hulk on the top of the sea-facing balustrade. In the shadow of a small, six-sided tower, the moon’s dull light glistened on the cold steel of the guns. Slipping into shadows, Dru sniffed the air.

“Potatoes
, yuck.” Then she recalled how delicious Shaw smelled the day he returned to her. The same day she’d shoved him out her window, and onto the roof when Mistress Cumberland appeared at her door.