Rio didn't want to see Dylan look upon him in fear or disgust, but a bigger part of him wanted to give her the truth. If she could look at his outward scars and not despise him, maybe she would be strong enough to see the ones that ruined him on the inside too.
"My mother lived on the outskirts of a very small, rural village in Spain. She was just a girl - perhaps sixteen - when she was raped by a vampire who'd gone Rogue." Rio kept his voice low to avoid being overheard, but the nearest humans - the group of adolescent thugs still amusing themselves several yards down the promenade - were paying no attention anyway. "The Rogue fed on her as he violated her, but my mother fought back. She bit him, apparently. Enough of his blood entered her mouth, and, subsequently, her body. Since she was a Breedmate, the combination of blood and seed resulted in a pregnancy."
"You," Dylan whispered. "Oh, God, Rio. How terrible for her to go through that. But at least she had you in the end."
"It was a wonder she didn't rout me out of her womb," he said, looking out at the black, glistening river and remembering his mother's anguish over the abomination she'd given birth to. "My mother was a simple country girl. She wasn't educated, not in the traditional sense, or in life matters. She lived alone in a cottage in the forest, cast out by her kin years before I came along."
"What for?"
"Manos del diablo," Rio replied. "They feared her devil's hands. You remember how I told you that all females born with the Breedmate mark also have special gifts...psychic abilities of some sort?"
Dylan nodded. "Yes."
"Well, my mother's gift was dark. With a touch and a focused thought, she could deliver death." Rio scoffed under his breath and held up his own lethal hands. "Manos del diablo."
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."