"but was he a killer?" rio asked soberly.

"i thought so, even though all the evidence was circumstantial. but in my gut, i was sure of his guilt. i didn't like him, and i knew if i looked hard enough i'd find something that pointed to his guilt. after a few false leads, i ran across a girl who'd babysat for the kids. when i questioned her for my story, she told me she'd seen bruises on the boy. she said the guy beat his kid, that she'd even witnessed it personally." dylan sighed. "i ran with all of it. i was so eager to get the story out there that i didn't fully check my source."

"what happened?"

"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."

"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.

what about the other people in this high-rent estate? just more vampire fantasists like him, who believed they descended from a solar-allergic alien race?

and here she was, the unwitting participant, abducted and held captive against her will by a wealthy, blood-drinking cult who believed she was somehow linked to them by virtue of a simple birthmark. hell, it sounded like a story that was tailor-made for a tabloid front page.

but if anything rio had said was true...?

good lord, if there was anything real about what she'd just heard, then she was sitting on a news story that would literally change the world. one that would alter reality for every human being on the planet. a chill ran up her spine when she considered how important this could be.

"i have a million questions," she murmured, venturing a glance across the room at rio.

he nodded as he got up from the chair. "that's understandable. i've given you a lot to absorb, and you'll be hearing even more before it's time for you to decide."

"time for me to decide?" she asked, watching as he strode over to the door to leave. "wait a second. what am i going to have to decide?"

"whether you become a permanent part of the breed, or go back to your old life with no knowledge of us at all."

she didn't eat the breakfast rio brought her, and the dinner he delivered later that day sat untouched too. she had no appetite for food, only a gnawing hunger for answers.

but he told her to save her questions, and when he came back in to inform her that it was time for the two of them to leave, dylan felt a sudden rush of trepidation.

a gate was being thrown open before her, but it was dark on the other side. if she looked into that darkness, would it consume her?

would there be any turning back?

"i don't know if i'm ready," she said, held in the mesmerizing snare of rio's eyes as he came toward her in the room. "i'm...i'm afraid of where we're going. i'm afraid of what i'm going to see there."

dylan looked up into the handsome, tragic face of her captor and waited for some words of encouragement - anything to give her hope that she would come out of this all right in the end.

he didn't offer any such thing, but when he reached out and placed his palm to her brow, his touch was gentle, incredibly warm. god, it felt so good.

"sleep," he said.

the firm command filtered through her mind like the soft rasp of velvet over bare skin. he wrapped his other arm around the back of her, just as her knees began to sway. his hold on her was strong, comforting. she could melt into that strength, she thought, as her eyes drifted closed.

"sleep now, dylan," he whispered against her ear. "sleep."

and she did.

chapter thirteen

one of the order's black suvs was waiting inside a private hangar as the small jet out of berlin taxied in from a corporate runway at boston's logan airport.

rio and dylan were the only passengers aboard the sleek gulfstream twin engine. the jet and its human pilots were on round-the-clock retainer for the order, although as far as the two flyboys knew, they pocketed their sizable cash salaries on behalf of a very private, very wealthy corporation that demanded - and received - complete loyalty and discretion.

they were paid extremely well to not so much as lift an eyebrow when rio had carried a dead-to-the-world, psychically tranced woman into the aircraft in berlin, nor when he took her off the jet in the same condition some nine hours later in boston. with dylan resting soundly in his arms, her backpack and messenger bag slung over his shoulder, rio headed down the brief flight of steps to the concrete below.

as he crossed the short distance to the range rover idling in the hangar, dante got out of the driver's side, jacking one elbow up on the open door. he was dressed in night patrol gear - long-sleeved tee-shirt, fatigues, and combat boots - all of it as black as his thick, shoulder-length hair. a black semiauto pistol was holstered under his left arm, another gun strapped to his thigh, but it was the two curved titanium blades sheathed at his hips that dante never left home without.

one of the order's newer members was with dante too, riding shotgun. ex - darkhaven enforcement agent sterling chase, also garbed in combat gear and loaded for bear, gave rio a nod of greeting from inside the vehicle. chase looked as hard-ass as any warrior, his razor-cut golden hair covered in a black skullcap, steel blue eyes hard and steady in his lean face, the shrewd gaze a little emptier than rio recalled it from a few months ago. now there was hardly any trace of the uptight, holier-than-thou bureaucrat who'd showed up last summer asking the order for help and then laying down his own rules of how he expected the warriors to work with him. dante had not-so-affectionately dubbed the darkhaven agent "harvard," a nickname that stuck even after chase left his old civilian life and joined up with the order.

"jay-zus," dante said, cracking a broad smile as rio approached with dylan lying slack in his arms. "talk about going off grid, man. five months is a helluva vacay." the warrior chuckled as he opened the suv's back door and helped rio get dylan and her gear situated inside. when they were settled, dante shut them in, then hopped back behind the wheel. he pivoted around to face rio. "at least you came home with a nice souvenir, eh?"