The Dragon Delasangre

I maneuver the turns of the channel at full speed, lights off, 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. Blind, I could bring the boat to shore unmarred.
"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. "You taught me yourself."
I can sense his disappointment even though I'm still ten minutes 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 Serengetti. We too need the thrill of the hunt, the taste of fresh-killed meat. The great cats feed on the grazing animals. Our people just happen to favor the taste of man - a far more dangerous game."
"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, overflowing with death . . . "
I've heard all this many times before. I interrupt, "Had we slain a thousand times more, 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."
"Enough!" Father says. "Come visit me before your hunt."
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. Father doesn't like being reminded of our weaknesses.
Sure, any one of my ancestors could kill hundreds of men in a single skirmish, but once the first of us was brought down in battle, mankind lost its awe of us. So what that it might take a thousand men to kill one of ours? There were always thousands more to try.
Father knows the history far too well. He taught it to me.
"In the end," he 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 . . . creatures of legend. They called themselves People of the Blood. Mankind called us Dragons."