Dylan was quiet for a moment, studying him in silence. "You have that ability as well?"

"A Breedmate mother passes down many traits to her sons: hair, skin, and eye color...as well as her psychic gifts. I think if my mother had known exactly what was growing in her belly, she would have killed me long before I was born. She did try at least once, after the fact."

Dylan's brow creased, and she gently placed her hand over his where it rested on the iron grate. "What happened?"

"It's one of my first vivid memories," Rio confessed. "You see, Breed offspring are born with small, sharp fangs. Right out of the womb, they need blood to survive. And darkness. My mother must have figured all of this out on her own, and tolerated it, because somehow I made it out of infancy. To me, it was perfectly natural to avoid the sun and to take my mother's wrist for nourishment. I think I must have been about four years old when I first noticed that she cried every time she had to feed me. She despised me - despised what I was - yet I was all she had."

Dylan stroked the back of his hand. "I can't even imagine how it must have been for you. For both of you."

Rio shrugged. "I knew no other way to live. But my mother did. On this particular day, with our cottage shutters bolted tight to ward off daylight, my mother offered me her wrist. When I took it, I felt her other hand come up around the back of my head. She held it there, and the pain jolted me like a bolt of lightning arrowing into my skull. I cried out and opened my eyes. She was weeping, great, terrible sobs as she fed me and held my head in her hand."

"Jesus Christ," Dylan whispered, her shock evident.

"She meant to kill you with her touch?"

Rio recalled his own marrow-deep shock when he made that same realization for himself - a child watching in terror as the person he trusted above all others tried to end his life. "She couldn't go through with it," he murmured flatly. "Whatever her reasons, she drew her hand away and ran out of the cottage. I didn't see her again for two days. By the time she came back, I was starving and terrified. I thought she'd abandoned me for good."

"She was afraid too," Dylan pointed out, and Rio was glad not to hear any trace of pity for him in her voice. Her fingers were warm and reassuring as she took his hand in her grasp. The hand he'd just told her could wield death with a touch. "The both of you must have felt so isolated and alone."

"Yes," he said. "I suppose we did. It all ended about a year later. Some of the village men saw my mother and took an interest in her, apparently. They showed up one day at the cottage while we were sleeping. There were three of them. They kicked in the door and went after her. They must have heard the rumors about her because the first thing they did was bind her hands so she couldn't touch them."

Dylan's breath caught in her throat. "Oh, Rio..."

"They dragged her outside. I ran after them, trying to help her, but the sunlight was intense. It blinded me for a few seconds that felt like an eternity while my mother was screaming, begging them not to harm her or her son."

Rio could still picture the trees - everything so green and lush, the sky so blue overhead...an explosion of colors he'd only seen in darker, muted shades when he was out in the safety of night. And he could still see the men, three large human men, taking turns on a defenseless female while her son watched, frozen by terror and the limitations of his five-year-old body.

"They beat her, calling her ugly things: Maldecido. Manos del diablo. La puta de infierno. Something snapped in me when I saw her blood run red on the ground. I leaped on one of the men. I was so furious I wanted him to die in agony...and he did. Once I understood what I'd done, I went after the next man. I bit him in the throat and fed on him as my touch slowly killed him."

Dylan was staring at him now, saying nothing. Standing there, so very still.

"The last one looked up and saw what I'd done. He called me the same things he called my mother, then added two more names I'd never heard before: Comedor de la sangre. Monstruo. Blood-eater. Monster." Rio exhaled a brittle laugh. "Until that moment, I didn't know what I was. But as I killed the last of my mother's attackers and watched as she lay dying in the sunlit grass, some knowledge buried deep within me seemed to come awake and rise up. I finally understood that I was different, and what that meant."

"You were just a child," Dylan said softly. "How did you survive after that?"

"For a while I went hungry. I tried feeding from animals, but their blood was like poison. I hunted my first human about a week after the attack. I was out of my mind with hunger, and I had no experience with finding my own food. I killed several innocent people those first few weeks I was on my own. I would have gone Rogue eventually, but then something miraculous happened. I was tracking prey in the woods when a huge shadow came out of the trees. It was a man, I thought, but he moved so fast and so stealthily I could hardly keep focus on him. He was hunting too. He went after the peasant I'd set my sights on, and with a grace I was sorely lacking, he brought the human down and began to feed from the wound he'd opened in the man's throat. He was a blood-eater, like me."

"What did you do, Rio?"

"I watched in fascination," he said, remembering it as clearly as if it had just happened a few minutes ago.

"When it was over, the human got up and walked away as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. I was astonished, and when I drew in my breath, that's when the blood-eater saw me hiding nearby. He called me out and after hearing that I was alone, he brought me with him to his home. It was a Darkhaven. I met many others like me, and learned that I was part of a race called the Breed. As my mother had not seen fit to give me a name, my new family in the Darkhaven gave me the one I have now."

"Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio," Dylan said, the words sounding far too sweet as she spoke them. Her hand, as she placed it tenderly on the scarred side of his face felt far too comforting. "My God, Rio...it's a miracle you're standing here with me at all."

She moved closer to him now, looking up into his eyes. Rio could hardly breathe as she rose onto her toes and tilted his chin down to meet her kiss. Their lips came together for the second time that night...and with a need that neither one of them seemed willing or able to conceal.

He could have kissed her forever.

But it was at that precise moment that the quiet promenade erupted in a sudden cacophony of gunfire.

Chapter Twenty-four

Panic flooded Rio's veins like acid.

The gunfire came again, another rapid report that split the night. The sharp staccato pops were coming from somewhere close; in his head they were cannon fire, the sound of them - the shock of a sudden attack - ripping through his senses, filling his mind with a thick fog that swallowed the here and now.

Dylan, he thought fiercely.

Had to keep her safe.

He was only barely conscious of his actions as he grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down onto the grass beneath him. Her cry of alarm was muted, more felt than heard as he covered her body with his, willing to sacrifice himself for her.

Protecting her was all that mattered.

But as they hit the hard earth together, Rio felt his mind splintering off. Past and present began to blend, mesh...morph into a hazy confusion of thought and fracturing logic.

Suddenly he was in the warehouse again - Lucan, Nikolai, and the other warriors moving in on a raid of a Rogue lair in Boston. He was glancing up into the rafters of the abandoned building, noting the movement of enemies in the shadows.

Seeing the silver glint of an electronic device in the suckhead's hands.

Hearing Niko shout a warning that a bomb was set to blow...

Ah, fuck.

Rio roared as remembered pain blasted into his head, into every inch of his body. He felt like he was on fire, flesh burning, filling his nostrils with the stench of seared skin and hair.

Cool hands came up to his face, but he was too far gone to make sense of what was real and what was a nightmare from his recent past.

"Rio?"

He heard the soft voice, felt those soothing hands moving over his face.

And, from somewhere not far away the hoots and chortles of several human youths. The laughter was accompanied by the slap of sneakers on pavement, all of it growing distant now.

"Rio. Are you all right?"

He knew that voice. It filtered through the swelling madness that was engulfing him, a lifeline thrown to him in the dark of his mind. He reached for it, feeling her voice ground him where nothing else ever had.

"Dylan," he managed to rasp out between the panting of his breath. "Don't want you to get hurt..."

"I'm fine. It was only firecrackers." She smoothed her fingers over the cold clamminess of his forehead. "Those boys set them off by the railing over there. It's okay now."

Like hell it was.

He felt one of his blackouts coming on, and coming on fast. He rolled away from Dylan with a groan. "Shit...my head hurts...can't think straight."

She must have leaned over him, because he felt her breath skate across his cheek as she blew out a low curse. "Your eyes, Rio. Shit. They're changing...they're glowing amber."

He knew they must be. His fangs were biting into his tongue, his skin tightening up all over his body as rage and pain transformed him. He was at his most deadly like this, when his mind was not his own. When his devil's hands were at their most unpredictable, and most powerful.

"We have to get you someplace less public," Dylan said. She slipped her hands underneath his shoulders.

"Hold on to me. I'm going to help you stand up."

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"Leave me," he rasped.

Dylan scoffed. "Like hell I will. You can't lie out here like this in the middle of Manhattan and expect not to be noticed. Now, come on. Get. Up."

"I can't...don't want to touch you. I don't want to hurt you, Dylan."

"Then don't," she said, and put her weight into the task of hoisting him up onto his feet.

Rio had no choice but to put his hands on her shoulders to steady himself as the fog in his mind grew thicker, swallowing up his vision. He fought to keep the blackout at bay, knowing Dylan would be safest only if he remained lucid.

"Lean on me, damn it," she ordered him. "I'm going to help you."

Dylan wedged herself under Rio's arm and took his wrist in her hand, bearing as much of his weight as she could while she tried to find somewhere private for him to deal with the aftershocks of the attack that had come over him. She led him off the riverside walkway and up a one-way side street where there was less traffic, and far less people around to get close enough to see his transformation.

"Still good?" she asked him, hurrying toward an old brick church with plenty of shadows behind it. "Can you make it a bit farther?"

He gave a nod and grunted, but each step was more sluggish than the last. "Blacking...out..."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that," she said. "It's okay, Rio. Just hang in with me for another minute, okay?"

No answer this time, but she could feel him working to stay upright and moving. Struggling to stay lucid long enough for her to help him.

"You're doing great," she told him. "Almost there."

She pulled him into the dark behind the building, guiding him to an alcove near a rusted, padlocked door. Using the brick wall as back support for Rio, Dylan carefully eased him down into a sitting position on the ground. She threw a glance in both directions, relieved to see that they were fairly concealed from the side street and any passersby. They were safe there for now.

"Tell me what to do, Rio. What do you need to get through this?"

He didn't answer. Maybe he was incapable. Dylan smoothed his dark hair away from his face and searched his eyes for any sign that he was still cognizant. The thin vertical pupils were always a shock, but no more so than the blast of amber that surrounded them. Rio's eyes burned like hot coals set into his skull. Anyone driving or walking past the small church would have to be blind to miss the otherworldly glow.

Dylan glanced at the old door and its decrepit lock. She'd seen Rio turn on lamps and water spigots with his mind, so pulling off a B&E on the church should have been no big thing. Except he clearly was in no condition to attempt it. His head slumped down onto his chest and with a pained groan, he started listing to the side.

"Shit," Dylan hissed.

She left him only long enough to search the lightless lot for something heavy. She came back with a piece of broken cinder block that had been keeping the lid of a Dumpster closed. The brick was rough in her hands, and made an echoing crack and a bright spark as she slammed it against the padlock on the church door. It took two more hard strikes before the lock dropped away with a thump.

"Rio," she whispered fiercely as she lifted his thick shoulders back up. "Rio, can you hear me? We have to get you inside. Can you stand up?"

She raised his chin and stared into open eyes that were unseeing now, vacant pits of fire.

"Goddamn it," she muttered, then winced at the poor choice of expletives, considering she was about to bring an unconscious creature of the night into a heavenly sanctuary for protection.

Dylan eased the church door open and listened for any signs of occupation. It was all quiet, not a single light on inside the small antechamber or in the main area of the nave beyond.

"Okay, here we go," she said under her breath as she went around to Rio's head and grabbed his arms to pull him over the threshold.

He was heavy as hell, two-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle and bone, none of it cooperating with her. Dylan tugged and dragged him into the darkness, then closed the door behind them.