Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

The names he was called as a young boy rose up in his ears like a battering storm. He remembered the dark forest and the smell of spilled blood on rough earth. The cottage where his mother had been killed before his eyes...

As darkness descended over him, he was that wild foundling he'd been in Spain so long ago. A confused and frightened child with no home, no family, and no one like him to show him the way of what he truly was.

Comedor de la sangre.

With a roar, he bent over his quivering prey and bit into the fleshy throat. He was savage, not from hunger but from fury and an old anguish that made him feel like a monster. Like the accursed. A terrifying blood-eater.

Manos del diablo.

Those devil's hands were no longer his own. The blackout was rising fast now, swamping him. Rio could no longer see the street in front of him. Logic and control shorted out like wires popping in his brain. He could hardly think. But he knew the instant the human's heart went silent beneath his fingers.

He knew, as the darkness pulled him under, that he had killed tonight.

A loud thump in the adjacent room woke Dylan out of a fitful sleep. She sat up, completely awake now. More noises sounded next door, low groans and heavy-footed stumbling, like someone - or something - large was in a world of agony.

The connecting suite was Rio's. He'd told her so earlier that evening, when he'd come back with a light dinner and her backpack of clothes, and told her to make herself comfortable for the night. He'd warned that he would be right on the other side of the wall, never more than a few seconds out of reach. Which hadn't exactly added to her comfort level in any way.

In spite of his threat, Dylan had suspected he'd gone out at some point. The neighboring room had been quiet for several hours, until this four A.M . wake-up call.

So much for Rio's claim that he was a deadly creature of the night. From the sloppy arrival going on over there, it sounded as if he was just another drunk, coming back from a hell of a bender in town.

Dylan sat there, arms crossed over her chest as she listened to him groan, knock into a heavy piece of furniture, curse ripely as his legs gave out beneath him.

How many nights did her father come home in similar condition? Jesus, far too many to count. He'd stumble in from the bar, so polluted it took her mom, Dylan, and both of her older brothers to haul him to bed before he fell and cracked open his skull. She'd developed a rigid lack of sympathy for men who let their weaknesses own them like that, but she had to admit that the noises Rio was making now seemed something other than your basic drunk-and-disorderly.

She climbed off the bed and moved quietly over to the connecting door. With her ear pressed to the cool wood, she could hear his breath rasping shallowly. She could almost imagine him lying on the floor where he crumbled, unable to move for whatever it was that he was dealing with over there.

"Hello?" she asked softly. "Um...Rio, is that you?"

Silence.

It dragged out, long and uneasy.

"Are you okay in there?"

She put her hand on the doorknob, but it didn't give at all. Locked, just like it had been all night.

"Should I call for someone to help y - "

"Go back to bed, Dylan."

The voice was low and snarly - Rio's voice, yet somehow very different than she'd ever heard it before.

"Move away from the door," came the strange growl of words again. "I don't need help."

Dylan frowned. "I don't believe you. You don't sound good at all."

She tried the knob again. It was old hardware; maybe she could jiggle it open.

"Dylan. Get away from the goddamn door."

"Why?"

"Because if you stay there one more second, I'm going to open it."

He exhaled sharply, and when he spoke again his voice was raw gravel. "I can smell you, Dylan, and I want to...taste you. I want you, and I'm not sane enough to keep my hands off you if I were to see you right now."

Dylan swallowed. She should be terrified of the man on the other side of that door. And yes, part of her was. Not because of his unbelievable claim that he was a vampire. Not because he had abducted her and seemed intent on keeping her prisoner, albeit in a gilded cage. She was terrified because of the honesty in what he'd just said - that he wanted her.