Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

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."

"Yes."

"But yesterday they were a mix of red and gold because - "

"Because I needed to feed," he said evenly. "I needed blood very badly, and it had to be taken directly from an open human vein."

Oh, Jesus. He really was serious.

Dylan's stomach lurched.

"So, you...fed last night? You're telling me that you went out last night and you drank someone's blood."

He gave only the slightest incline of his head. There was remorse in his eyes, some kind of private torment that made him seem both lethal and vulnerable at the same time. He was sitting there, seemingly intent on convincing her that he was a monster, but she'd never seen a more haunted expression in all her life.

"You don't have fangs," she lamely pointed out, her mind still rejecting what she was hearing from him. "Don't all vampires have fangs?"

"We have them, but they're not normally prominent. Our upper canines lengthen with the urge to feed, or in response to heightened emotion. The process is physiological, much like the reaction of our dermaglyphs ."

As he spoke, Dylan carefully watched his mouth. His teeth were straight and white and strong behind his full, sensual lips. It didn't look like a mouth meant for savagery, but for seduction. And that probably made it all the more dangerous. Rio's beautifully formed mouth was one that any woman would welcome on her own, never suspecting it could turn deadly.

"Because of our alien genes, our skin and eyes are hypersensitive to sunlight," he added, as calmly as he might discuss the weather. "Prolonged ultraviolet exposure is deadly to all of the Breed. That's why the windows are shaded during the day."

"Oh," Dylan murmured, feeling her head bob like that made perfect sense.

Of course they had to block out UV light. Any idiot knew that vampires incinerated like tissue paper under a magnifying glass if you left them out in the sun.

Now that she was thinking about it, she'd not once seen Rio out in daylight. In the mountain cave, he was protected from the sun. When he'd tracked her from Jicin to Prague, it had been late evening, total darkness. Last night, he'd gone out to hunt prey but obviously had made sure he was back before dawn.

Get a grip, Alexander.

This man was not a vampire - not really. There had to be some better explanation for what was going on here. Just because Rio sounded calm and reasonable didn't mean he wasn't completely deranged and delusional. A total nutjob. He had to be.