"She was the one who led me to you. I saw her on the mountain in Jicin."
An irrational suspicion sharpened his anger to something deadly. "What do you mean, you saw her? You knew Eva?"
Dylan swallowed, gave a small shrug of her shoulder. She held the picture frame out toward him. "I saw her...her spirit was there. She was there on the mountain with you."
"Bullshit," he growled. "Don't talk to me about that female. She's dead, and that's where she belongs."
"She asked me to help you, Rio. She sought me out. She wanted me to save you - "
"I said that's bullshit!" he roared.
Fury brought his body up off the mattress like a viper lashing out to strike. He knocked the frame out of Dylan's hands, and his rage hurled it across the room in blinding speed. It crashed into the large mirror on the wall opposite the bed, splintering on impact and sending shards of polished glass exploding out like a hail of tiny razor blades.
He heard Dylan cry out, but it wasn't until he smelled the juniper-sweet scent of her blood that he realized what he'd done.
She held her hand up to her cheek, and when her fingers came away, they were stained scarlet from a small, bleeding gash just below her left eye.
It was the sight of that wound that snapped Rio out of his downward spiral. Like a bucket of cold water thrown over his head, seeing Dylan injured jolted him instantly sober.
"Ah, Cristo, " he hissed. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry."
He moved to touch her, to assess how badly he'd hurt her - and she backed away from him with wide, terrified eyes.
"Dylan...I didn't mean to - "
"Stay away from me."
He reached out, meaning only to reassure her that he meant no harm.
"No." She flinched, shaking her head wildly. "Oh, my God. Don't you touch me."
Madre de Dios.
She was gaping at him in utter horror now. She was trembling, eyes fixed on him in fear and confusion.
When his tongue brushed across the pointed tips of his extended fangs, Rio understood the source of her terror. He stood before her, the vampire he'd told her he was but which her human mind refused to comprehend.
Now, it did.
She was seeing the truth of it for herself, in the physical changes that had come over him and transformed him from scarred madman to a creature out of a nightmare. There was no hiding the fangs that stretched even larger as his hunger for her swelled. No way to mask the elliptical sharpening of his pupils as the amber glow of bloodthirst swamped his vision.
He looked at the small cut, the rivulet of blood trailing down from it so red against the creamy skin of Dylan's cheek, and he could hardly form a coherent thought.
"I tried to tell you, Dylan. This is what I am."
Chapter Sixteen
"Vampire."
Dylan heard the word slip past her lips, despite the fact that she could hardly believe what she was seeing.
In a matter of moments, Rio had transformed before her eyes. She stared in shock at the changes she'd just witnessed. His irises glowed like embers, no longer the smoky topaz color they normally were, but an incredible shade of amber that nearly swallowed up his impossibly thinned pupils. The bones of his face seemed starker now, lean, blade-sharp cheekbones and a squared jaw that seemed carved of stone.
And behind the lush cut of his mouth, Rio sported a pair of fangs like something straight out of the movies.
"You..." Her voice trailed off as those hypnotic amber eyes drank her in. She sat down weakly on the edge of the bed. "My God. You really are..."
"I am Breed," he said simply. "Just as I told you."
Seated in front of him, her vision filled with the broad musculature of his bare chest. The complicated pattern of skin markings on his forearms tracked up over his shoulders and down along his pectorals. The entire array of markings - dermaglyphs ,he'd called them the first time she noticed them - were livid with color now, the darkest they'd been yet. Deep reds, purples, and black saturated the beautiful flourishes and arcing lines.
"I can't stop the change," he murmured, as if he felt obligated to explain himself. "The transformation is automatic for every Breed male when he senses fresh spilled blood."
His gaze shifted slightly down from her eyes, to where her cheek burned from the bite of the glass that struck her. She felt the warm track of blood sliding toward her chin like a tear. Rio watched that droplet fall with an intensity that made Dylan tremble. He licked his lips and swallowed, but clamped his teeth together as rigidly as a vise.
"Stay here," he said, scowling hard, his voice dark and commanding.
Instinct told Dylan she might be smarter to run, but she refused to be afraid. Strange as it seemed, she felt she'd come to know this man over the past handful of days they'd been thrust together. Rio was no saint, that was for sure. He had abducted her, imprisoned her, and she still wasn't certain what he meant to do with her, but she didn't think he was a danger to her.
What she'd just witnessed here wasn't exactly cause for celebration, but in her heart, she didn't fear what he was.
Well, not completely, anyway.
The water was still running in the shower. She heard it turn off, then Rio came out holding a damp white washcloth. He offered it to her at arm's length. "Press this to the wound. It will stanch the bleeding."
Dylan took the cloth and held it to her cheek. She didn't miss Rio's long exhale as she covered the gash, like he was relieved he didn't have to look at it anymore. The fiery color of his eyes slowly began to dim, his slender pupils resuming their round shape. But his dermaglyphs were still flushed with color, and his fangs still looked deadly sharp.