Literature / Delasangre

"We are what we are."

— Don Henri DelaSangre

The Dragon DelaSangre is a series of four Urban Fantasy novels written by Alan F. Troop.

• The Dragon DelaSangre
• Dragon Moon
• The Seadragon’s Daughter
• A Host of Dragons

The books follow Peter DelaSangre, a shapeshifting man-eating dragon (a “Person of the Blood”) who lives on his father Don Henri’s private island off the shore of Miami. He often rides to the mainland on his Grady White to manage LaMar Associates, the company his father built with the treasure he amassed through his fleet of pirate ships. Growing up in the mid-20th century, Peter used his shapeshifting abilities to make himself look like the movie stars he saw on TV; this, combined with his wealth, brings a lot of attention from human women, but he needs a mate of his own kind. One night he catches a faint cinnamon musk in the air which draws him south, all the way to Jamaica’s Cockpit Country. With the scant knowledge his now-deceased father left him of his own race, Peter needs to win his bride, Elizabeth, and bring her home to Miami. Meanwhile, there are constant threats to his privacy and his fortune.

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This series provides examples of:

• Amoral Attorney: Jeremy Tindall, and later his son Ian, who need to be kept under constant watch. The Tindall family has been serving the DelaSangres for generations, since the American government took control of Florida. At that time, Don Henri traveled to Washington and found the most corrupt (and therefore controllable) lawyer he could find, literally biting his hand off at the wrist the first time he tried to steal money from him.
• Assassination Attempt: Peter is shot by a mysterious boat near his private island, and later he’s sent a mail bomb which kills his receptionist at LaMar Associates.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: When the Pelk attack by sea in The Seadragon’s Daughter, Peter dumps gasoline into the harbor of his island and ignites it. Not only do the flames kill many of Mowdar’s troops, but its light exposes those already on land as Peter and Chloe empty shotgun after shotgun on them.
  • When Peter is fighting to free Chloe in A Host of Dragons, he uses the smoke of the Everglades’ large wildfires to hide and surprise his attackers.
• Beware of Vicious Dog: Don Henri bred a pack of attack dogs with overly large heads and mouths to control the slaves building his house. That unique breed continues to guard the island. The Pelk attack nearly wipes them out.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: The sea dwelling Pelk use glowpools in their underground caverns instead of electricity.
• Born from a Dead Woman: After Santos kills his wife, Peter realizes his son is still alive inside her womb. Peter must cut him out with his talons and give him his first meal, Santos’ nearly dead girlfriend.
• Breath Weapon: By drinking a vial of hidden potion, Peter briefly gains the strength and fire-breathing of a Zal, the largest and most powerful castryll. He nearly kills Charles and Derek with the flame.
• Bullying a Dragon: When a rival company appears from Europe, Claudia Gomez sends her best operatives to interrogate a man codenamed ‘Samson’. Peter finds out the hard way that Samson is from his own race. All that’s left of the interrogators are blood stains on the floor.
• Chekhov's Gun: In Dragon Moon we see a door near Peter’s treasure room, secured with rusted chains he has never removed, protecting a secret relic his family has had for as long as anyone can remember. His father warned him to ‘open this door only if you have no other hope’. The fight with Charles and Derek later on gives Peter the need to look inside.
• Cock Fight: A female in Oestrus will draw in male dragons who fight to the death to become her mate.
• Decisive Battle: When Peter’s second wife, Chloe, is kidnapped and tortured by Aric in A Host of Dragons, he and Derek must fight eleven dragons to free her.
• Devious Dolphins: Dolphins are often targeted by the Pelk, who shapeshift into their form and hunt them just as Undrae hunt humans. In The Seadragon’s Daughter, Peter and Chloe need to be suspicious of every dolphin that roams near their island as they prepare for Mowdar’s arrival. When Mowdar takes heavy losses and tries to retreat, promising Peter he’d return, the dolphins near the island see an opportunity for revenge against the Pelk.
• Disposable Vagrant: Don Henri warned Peter not to hunt wealthy humans. "The poor are easier to take. No one cares about them."
• Doppelgänger: Not only can People of the Blood shift into human forms they craft for themselves, but they can mimic other humans and each other’s human forms as well. Derek impersonates Peter in Dragon Moon while he’s imprisoned in Morgan’s Hole, so he can transfer Peter’s corporate control to his father Charles. When Peter gets free and confronts Derek in Miami, trying to stop the deal, Charles’ lawyer in the meeting room turns out to be Charles himself.
  • The Seadragon’s Daughter features a plot to frame Davidson for the disappearances around Caya DelaSangre, where Peter impersonates Davidson and allows himself to be shot by Santo’s girlfriend, a mole who’s in on the plan.
• Double Meaning: A young woman dancing at Calle Ocho enjoys Peter’s glance, flashing a grin and thrusting her hips at him. She misinterprets his interest. He’s hungry.
• Dowry Dilemma: When a male dragon successfully takes a mate he’s expected to bring gifts to her parents. Peter didn’t know about this custom and arrived in Morgan’s Hole empty handed, but he had more than enough gold back home to make up for it.
• Dragon Hoard: The DelaSangres have been collecting gold, silver, gems, and jewelry for as long as they’ve existed. As Don Henri’s only living descendant, all of it now belongs to Peter.
• Engagement Challenge: In Dragon Moon’s story of Dwyla and Kestur, set long before humans controlled the Earth, Magnus locked his daughter away during Oestrus and fought any males who were drawn to mate with her. One of the young males, Kestur, suggested he and Magnus have a contest of his daughter’s choosing. Dwyla thought of a contest that Kestur could win against her father, ‘I will stay with whoever flies the highest, the fastest.’ She follows them up and witnesses her father’s defeat, only to see her victorious mate continue, unaware he had won, until his heart burst and he fell to the surface of the moon. Whenever a halo appears around the moon, it’s said to be her tears as she flies around it.
• Every Man Has His Price: LaMar Associates owns politicians all over Florida.
• Exiled to the Couch: Chloe won’t let Peter sleep in the bedroom after he’s held prisoner by the Pelk, due to what happens between him and Lorrel. Later, in A Host of Dragons, she becomes outraged when Peter suggests letting their young children hide under the Pelk’s protection.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Humans who drink Dragon’s Tear wine become indifferent to everything around them, keeping a blank expression even when deep gouges are cut into their faces. Charles and Samantha Blood use the wine to pacify their slaves.
• Find the Cure!: Peter’s only hope to survive the Pelk’s poison is by receiving a dose of antidote every few days, which effectively makes him their prisoner. His father, Don Henri, had found the permanent cure. When the Pelk try to kill his wife, Peter comes to her rescue but then has to race through his father’s notes, written in old Spanish, to find what cure he used.
• Frame-Up: When Santos won’t stop spying on Peter’s island, looking for his missing sister, his henchmen get the police to hold him on a false DUI charge.
  • In The Seadragon’s Daughter, Peter uses his shapeshifting abilities to frame Davidson for the disappearances around his island.
• Hand Cannon: When talons aren’t enough, Peter is more than willing to fight his fellow dragons with Uzis, rail guns, fifty caliber magnums, and even the cannons from his father’s pirate ships. In A Host of Dragons, Aric fires on Peter with a revolver while they’re in the air, operating the trigger with his claw. It takes several large bullets to kill even one of them.
• Healing Factor: Dragons can rapidly heal their wounds, so long as they have the energy. They need to hunt and feed to heal serious injuries.
• Here There Were Dragons: The human race came to rule the earth and lost their fear of dragons, knowing the monsters could be killed if enough humans attacked at once. "By the time of the beginning of recorded history, only a few dozen of our families were left."
• I Have Your Son: When Derek impersonates Peter in Miami, he hides his son Henri somewhere the real Peter and Chloe can’t find him. Through their mindspeaking ability Henri is able to describe what he hears in the dark room, and they trace his location to a drawbridge on Biscayne Boulevard.
• Immune to Bullets: Their scales and mass can shrug off smaller bullets. Even large bullets aren’t usually fatal.
• It Has Been an Honor: When Peter realizes he’s beaten at the end of A Host of Dragons he struggles to fly near enough to Chloe to mindspeak with her one last time.
• Literal Maneater: The Undrae regard humans as their prey.
• Living Crashpad: A tactic Peter employs in desperate air battles, dropping onto his opponent from above and staying on top so the ground kills them without killing him.
• Long-Lost Relative: A Pelk female named Lorrel shows up on Peter’s island claiming to be his distant cousin. Peter’s father had never mentioned his time with the Pelk.
• Magic Antidote: Alchemist’s Powder is used in the marriage ceremony to counter the poisonous effects of Death’s Rose. When Peter marries Chloe in Dragon Moon, the antidote doesn’t look right to him. He’s tricked into poisoning himself.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: When Auturo Gomez resists the Blood family’s attempt to take over LaMar Associates, he’s beat and nearly killed in the street. It’s made to look like a mugging gone wrong.
• Masquerade: There are few dragons left in the world and modern humanity has forgotten they exist. Their long lives and shapeshifting abilities allow them to dwell among us and enrich themselves through the companies they own.
• Mile-High Club: The Undrae’s preferred method of mating.
• Mind Rape: The real reason for Lorrel to bring Peter back to the Pelk with her. Under the guise of a healing circle, the li-srrynn sing a mesmerizing song that forces Peter to mate with Lorrel, allowing her to conceive a son.
• Mindlink Mates: Once Peter and Elizabeth drink the mixture of Death’s Rose and Alchemist’s Powder they can see, feel, and think what the other sees, feels, and thinks. It does a lot to enhance their wedding night.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: When a dragon is killed in battle, it’s considered an honor that the victor eat him.
• Mugged for Disguise: Peter needs to take Chloe to Miami while her brother Derek is impersonating him and trying to steal control of LaMar Associates. Without the ability to use his own identity, Peter and his new wife kill a couple from a docked cruiseship and take their places on the return trip to Florida.
• Nailed to the Wagon: Peter and his father would seize winos and beggars around Miami when no better prey could be found, locking them in the cells beneath the house and forcing them to eat healthy meals until the alcohol and drugs left their wretched bodies. "A hundred percent of my guests have given up their addictions and not one of them has ever had the opportunity to backslide."
• Not Quite Dead: When Peter is defeated by Aric he’s too weak to even mindspeak to Chloe. Aric takes Chloe away and forces her to become his bride, assuming Peter died where he left him in the Everglades. Without Derek nursing him back to health afterward, Peter would have.
• Not Using the "D" Word: Only humans call them ‘Dragons’. They call themselves ‘People of the Blood.’
• Old, Dark House: Peter modernized his father’s house on Caya DelaSangre with electricity and modern kitchen appliances. When Peter visits the Blood family in Morgan’s Hole, their house is lit by torches just the way his own used to be. After Derek sees the house in Miami he tries to get his parents to electrify Morgan’s Hole. Chole also gets them a satellite phone but their parents refuse to use it.
• Oh, Crap!: Aric walks into the meeting room of LaMar Associates with Chloe, the wife he stole from Peter after leaving him for dead in the Everglades, with her ready to give him ownership of her late husband’s estate. Aric freezes when he sees Peter, fully recovered and waiting for him at the table.
• Our Sirens Are Different: The Pelk, a castryll that lives in the sea, is the source of mankind’s tales about sirens luring sailors to their doom. They never speak in their human forms and can slip in and out of the water without making ripples.
• Pirate Booty: Don Henri’s years leading a pirate fleet added to the DelaSangre family’s already considerable wealth. The rooms beneath Peter’s house are filled with gold and riches.
• Planet of Steves: All Undrae families go by the name “blood”. The DelaSangres in Miami, the Bloods in Jamaica, the Sangs in Haiti, the Bloeds in Curacao, and the Bluts in Europe.
• Predatory Business: LaMar Associates was built by Don Henri to keep the DelaSangre family wealthy and to give them control over Miami’s politics. The company has been led by members of the Gomez family for as long as it’s existed, humans the DelaSangres trust to do whatever it takes to advance the company’s interests and keep their secrets. In Dragon Moon and A Host of Dragons, other firms controlled by dragons try to seize control of LaMar from Peter.
• Prefers Raw Meat: When Peter’s at a restaurant he orders his meat “blood rare” to savor the flavor of it. The large steaks he refrigerates at home, on days he chooses not to hunt, are simply microwaved long enough to take the chill out of the meat.
• Prongs of Poseidon: In The Seadragon’s Daughter, tridents are the preferred weapon of the sea dwelling Pelk.
  • In A Host of Dragons, Peter and Derek use them in the air as a surprise weapon against Aric’s fighters.
• Quicksand Sucks: Sometimes, in the Everglades, Peter’s prey gets stuck in quicksand while fleeing him. Peter will fall into quicksand himself at the end of his fight with Aric, who will leave him there for dead.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: LaMar Associates routinely pays off public officials to manipulate laws and make people look the other way. While Peter himself is practical with his vast wealth, Elizabeth and Chloe eagerly spend the money on fancy cars and speedboats.
• Secret Underground Passage: The sixth and smallest cell beneath the house has never been used for prisoners. Pulling up on the cot reveals a narrow staircase down to his treasure room.
• Slipping a Mickey: Jorge and Casey trick Peter into drinking a large amount of Dragon’s Tear wine. He's incapacitated while they kill his first wife, Elizabeth.
  • In Dragon Moon, when he’s in the ceremony to marry Chloe, her parents don’t give him the Alchemist’s Powder to counter the poisonous effects of Death’s Rose. It’s a trick to allow their son Derek to impersonate him and steal his fortune.
• Smells Sexy: When a female Undrae goes into Oestrus, they emit a powerful musk that resembles cinnamon and cloves. Any males outside their own family have difficulty controlling themselves when they smell it.
• Stranger Danger: When they’re in the city for Calle Ocho, a stranger asks Lizzie if she can help find his dog. Through mindspeaking her brother and parents are able to figure out what’s happening and tell her to shift a finger into a talon. She gives him a deep cut and runs before he can get her into the back of the Mercedes. The man, a human that the germans set up, thinks the little girl cut him with a knife.
• Super Swimming Skills: Peter’s escape from Morgan’s Hole requires him to navigate through rushing underground rivers and caverns. He’s told slaves escape that way and are never heard from again. Peter barely survives to see daylight.
• Supernatural Green Eyes: All dragons have emerald green eyes. It's the only physical trait the shapeshifters can’t conceal.
• Tantrum Throwing: Peter hides in the secret rooms beneath his house during the fight with Charles and Derek. While he searches for something to even the odds, Charles throws a fit and threatens to break everything in his house if he doesn’t come out.
• The Alibi: Derek shapeshifts into Peter’s form and walks into jail on live television while the real Peter frames Jordan Davidson for the disappearances around his island. No one would believe Jordan if he tells them Peter morphed into his form and shot him before threatening Pepe and his girlfriend.
• The Power of Love: Undrae mate for life and act on instinct. Peter, having grown up on television, wants to build a relationship on love. After Aric forces Chloe away from him in A Host of Dragons, Chloe proves she can overcome her instincts and help Peter win her back.
• The Teetotaler: Dragons don’t drink alcohol. It wreaks havoc with their metabolism.
• Telepathy: All dragons mindspeak to each other when in their natural forms, and often in their human forms too, with a range similar to a radio station. Through masking they can choose who hears them.
• Truth Serums: Samantha Blood uses Witch’s Tongue on Peter so she can ask questions about his company and his father’s treasure before the poisonous Death’s Rose kills him. Peter finds that he can omit details, much to Samantha’s annoyance. His answers are too vague to help her much.
• Unaffected by Spice: During his captivity, Jorge earns Peter’s trust by making him Carne’ Diablo. Peter asks for the spicy dish again and again. Jorge sees his opportunity kill Peter by making the meat as spicy as possible and switching his water with Dragon’s Tear wine.
• Uncanny Atmosphere: Even unaware that dragons walk among them, some people can sense them on an unconscious level. One of LaMar Associates’ receptionists, Sarah, always becomes nervous around Peter.
• Vetinari Job Security: Malka is the only Pelk who knows how to mix potions, including the antidote Peter needs to counter their poison.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: From an early age, Undrae learn to take human form. They can shift their entire bodies or simply change their fingers into talons. There’s no limit on how long they can stay in either form. The Pelk learn to shift into dolphin forms too. Shifting burns a lot of energy and makes them hungry.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Some, like Peter and Chloe, won’t hunt children. Others prefer them for the taste.