Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

"Turns out the babysitter had slept with the guy and had some personal axe to grind. He was no Father of the Year, but he never laid a hand on his son, and he sure as hell didn't kill him. After I was fired from the newspaper, the case blew apart when DNA evidence linked the boy's death to a man who lived next door to him. The father was innocent, and I took an extended leave from journalism."

Rio's dark brows arched. "And from there you ended up writing about Elvis sightings and alien abductions."

Dylan shrugged. "Yeah, well, it was a slippery slope."

He was staring again, watching her with that same thoughtful silence as before. She couldn't think when he was looking at her like that. It made her feel exposed somehow, vulnerable. She didn't like the feeling one bit.

"We'll be leaving tonight, as I mentioned yesterday," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "You'll have an early dinner, if you like, then, at dusk, I'll come back to prepare you for travel."

That didn't sound good. "Prepare me...how?"

"You can't be allowed to identify this location, or the one we're traveling to. So tonight before we leave, I will have to place you in a light trance."

"A trance. As in, hypnotize me?" She had to laugh. "Get real. Anyway, that kind of stuff never works on me. I'm immune to the power of suggestion, just ask my mother or my boss."

"This is different. And it will work on you. It already has."

"What're you talking about, it already has?"

He gave a vague shrug of his shoulder. "How much do you recall of the trip from Prague to here?"

Dylan frowned. There wasn't much, actually. She remembered Rio pushing her into the back of the truck, then darkness as the vehicle started rolling. She remembered being very frightened, demanding to know where he was taking her and what he intended to do with her. Then...nothing.

"I tried to stay awake, but I was so tired," she murmured, trying to recall even another minute of what had to have been several hours of travel and coming up blank. "I fell asleep on the way here. When I woke up I was in this room..."

The small curve of his lips seemed a bit too self-satisfied. "And you'll sleep again this time until I want you awake. It has to be this way, Dylan. I'm sorry."

She wanted to make some crack about how ludicrous this whole situation was sounding - from the vampire bullshit he'd tried to feed her yesterday, to this nonsense about trances and traveling to secret locations - but suddenly it didn't seem very funny to her. It seemed impossibly serious.

It suddenly seemed all too real.

She looked at him sitting there, this man who was unlike any other man she'd ever known, and something whispered in her subconscious that this was no joke. Everything he'd told her was true, no matter how unbelievable it might sound.

Dylan's gaze fell from his stoic, unreadable face to the powerful arms that were crossed over his thick chest. The tattoos that snaked around his biceps and forearms were different from the last time she'd seen them. Lighter now, just a few shades deeper than his olive skin tone.

Yesterday the ink in them had been red and gold - she was sure of it.

"What happened to your arms?" she blurted. "Tattoos don't just change colors..."

"No," he said, glancing down at the now-subtle markings. "Tattoos don't change colors. But dermaglyphs do."

"Dermaglyphs?"

"Naturally occurring skin markings within the Breed. They pass down from father to son and serve as an indicator of an inpidual's emotional and physical states." Rio pushed up the short sleeves of his tee-shirt, baring more of the intricate pattern on his skin. Beautiful, swirling arcs and geometric, tribal designs tracked all the way up onto his shoulders and disappeared under his shirt.

"Dermaglyphs functioned as protective camouflage for the forebears of the race. The Ancients' bodies were covered from head to foot. Each generation of Breed offspring is born with fewer, less elaborate glyphs as the original bloodlines dilute with Homo sapiens genes."

Dylan's head was spinning with so many questions, she didn't know which one to ask first. "I'm supposed to believe that not only are you one of the undead, but that the undead can reproduce?"

He scoffed mildly. "We're not undead. The Breed is a very long-lived, hybrid species that began thousands of years ago on this planet. Genetically, we are part human, part otherworlder."

"Otherworlder," Dylan repeated, more calmly than she could believe. "You mean...alien? To be clear here, you're talking about vampire aliens. Am I getting that right? Is that what you're saying?"

Rio nodded. "Eight such creatures crashed on Earth a long time ago. They raped and slaughtered countless humans. Eventually, some of those rapes were done on human females who could sustain the alien seed and carry it to term. Those women were the first known Breedmates. From their wombs, the first generation of my kind - the Breed - took root."

Everything she was hearing bordered on the knife's edge of pure, delusional insanity, but there was no mistaking the sincerity of Rio's tone. He believed what he was saying, one hundred percent. And because he was so gravely serious, Dylan found it hard to dismiss him.

To say nothing of the fact that she could personally vouch that the marks on his skin, whatever they were and wherever they had truly come from, had done something that defied all logic. "Your dermaglyphs are just a little darker than your skin color today."