"am i going to find anything on this machine that shouldn't be there?" he asked as he turned it on and the monitor lit him up in a pale blue light.

"that computer is old. i hardly ever use it."

"you won't mind if i check," he said, not really a question when he was already bringing up files and having a look at what they contained. he wouldn't find anything but some of her earliest articles and old correspondence.

"do you have a lot of enemies?" dylan asked, trailing over to him.

"we have enough."

"i'm not one of them, you know." she flipped on a light, more for her benefit than his, since he obviously didn't mind the dark. "i'm not going to tell anyone about what you've told me, or what i've seen these past several days. none of it, i swear to you. and not because you're going to take those memories away from me either. i would keep your secrets safe, rio. i just want you to know that."

"it's not that simple," he said, facing her now. "it wouldn't be safe. not for you, or for us. our world protects its own, but there are dangers and we can't be everywhere. letting someone outside the vampire nation carry information about us could be catastrophic. occasionally it is done, even though it's ill-advised. a human here or there has been trusted with the truth, but it's rare in the extreme. personally i've never seen it work out well in the end. someone always gets hurt."

"i can take care of myself."

he chuckled, but there was little humor in it. "i have no doubt. but this is different, dylan. you're not just a human. you're a breedmate, and that will always mean you're different. you can bond with a male of my kind through blood and you can live forever. well, something close to forever."

"you mean like tess and her mate?"

rio nodded. "like them, yes. but to be a part of the breed's world, you would have to cut your ties to the human one. you'd have to leave them behind."

"i can't do that," she said, her brain automatically shutting down the idea of leaving her mom. "my family is here."

"the breed is your family too. they would care for you as family, dylan. you could make a very nice life for yourself in the darkhavens."

she couldn't help but notice that he was talking about all of this from a comfortable distance, keeping himself totally out of the equation. part of her wondered if it would be so easy to turn him down if he were asking her personally to join his world.

but he wasn't doing that at all. and dylan's choice, easy or not, would have been the same regardless of what he was offering her.

she shook her head. "my life is here, with my mom. she's always been there for me, and i can't leave her. i wouldn't. not now. not ever."

and she needed to find a way to get to her soon, she thought, weathering rio's steady, measuring gaze. she didn't want to wait until he decided to start scrubbing her memory now that she'd opted out of the vampire lottery.

"i...um...i've got to use the bathroom," she murmured. "i hope you don't think you're going to stand guard over me while i go?"

rio's eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave a slow shake of his head. "go on. but don't take long."

dylan couldn't believe he was actually letting her walk into the adjacent bathroom and shut herself inside. for all his cautious recon of her apartment, he must have missed the fact that there was a small window next to the toilet.

a window that opened onto a fire escape, which led down to the street below.

dylan turned on the faucet and ran a hard stream of cold water into the sink while she considered the insanity of what she was about to attempt. she had two-hundred-plus pounds of combat-trained, seriously armed vampire waiting for her on the other side of the door. she'd already witnessed his lightning-fast reflexes, so the odds of outrunning him were pretty much zilch. all she could hope for was a sneak escape, and that would mean getting the decrepit window open without making too much noise, then climbing down the rickety fire escape without having it crumble beneath her. if she managed to clear those sizable obstacles, all she'd have to do is start running till she hit the subway station.

yeah, piece of cake.

she knew it was nuts, even as she hurried to the window and slid the sash lock free. the window needed a good jab to loosen the several coats of old paint that had all but sealed it shut. dylan coughed a couple of times, loud enough to mask the noise as she knocked the window frame with the heel of her palm.

she waited a second, listening for movement in the other room. when she didn't hear any, she lifted the window and got a faceful of humid city night air.

oh, christ. was she really going to do this?

she had to.

nothing else mattered but seeing her mom.

dylan put herself halfway out the window to make sure the way down was clear. it was. she could do this. she had to try. with a couple of good deep breaths to gird herself, dylan tapped the flusher and then climbed out the window as the toilet whooshed into action behind her.

her descent down the fire escape was rushed and clumsy, but in a few seconds her feet touched down on the pavement. as soon as she hit the ground, she gunned it for the subway.

over the rush of water running in the bathroom sink, rio had indeed heard the nearly silent slide of the window being pushed open behind that closed door. the flushing toilet didn't quite mask the metallic clank of the fire escape as dylan carefully climbed out onto it.

she was attempting escape, just as he expected she would.

he'd seen the wheels turning in her head as he talked with her, a look of rising desperation coming into her eyes every moment she was forced to stay in the apartment with him. he'd known, even before she made the excuse of needing to use the bathroom, that she was going to try to get away from him at her first opportunity.

rio could have stopped her. he could stop her now, as she clambered down the rickety steel ladder to the street below her apartment. but he was more curious about where she planned to run. and to whom.

he'd believed her when she said she had no intention of exposing the breed to human news outlets. if it turned out she was lying to him, he didn't know what he would do. he didn't want to think he could be so wrong about her - told himself none of that would matter at all if he just wiped her mind clean of the knowledge.

but he'd hesitated to scrub her on the spot after she said she wouldn't leave her human world for that of the breed. he hesitated because he realized, selfishly, that he wasn't quite ready to erase himself from her thoughts.

and now she was running off into the night, away from him.

with a headful of memories and knowledge that he damn well couldn't allow her to keep.

rio got up from dylan's computer desk and walked into the small bathroom. it was empty, as he knew it would be, the window yawning open onto the dark summer night outside.

he climbed out, boots hitting the fire escape for a split second before he leaped from the structure and landed on the asphalt below. tipping his head back, he dragged the air into his lungs until he caught dylan's scent.

then he went after her.

chapter twenty-two

dylan stood outside the windowed door of her mother's room on the hospital's tenth floor, trying to rally her courage to go inside. the cancer ward was so quiet up here at night, only the hushed chatter from the nurses on duty at their station and the occasional shuffle of a patient's slippered feet as they made a brief circuit around the wing, fingers clasped around the wheeled iv pole that rolled along beside them. her mom had been one of those tenacious, but weary-eyed patients not so long ago.

dylan hated to think there was more of that pain and struggle ahead of her mother now. the biopsy the doctors had ordered wouldn't be in for a couple of days, according to the nurse at the desk. they were hopeful that in the likelihood it did come back positive, they might have caught the relapse early enough to begin a new, more aggressive round of chemotherapy. dylan was praying for a miracle, despite the heaviness in her chest as she steeled herself for bad news.

she hit the hand sanitizer dispenser mounted next to the door, squirted a blob of isopropyl gel into her palms and rubbed it in. as she pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box on the counter and put them on, everything she'd been through in the past several days - even the past few hours - fell away, forgotten. her own problems just evaporated as she pushed open the door, because nothing mattered right now except the woman curled up on the bed, tethered to monitoring wires and intravenous lines.

god, her mother looked so tiny and frail lying there. she'd always been petite, smaller than dylan by a good four inches, her hair a richer shade of red, even with the handful of grays that had crept in since the first battle with cancer. now sharon's hair was kept short, a spiky, spunky cut that made her look at least a decade younger than her true age of sixty-four. dylan felt a pang of irrational, but jabbing anger for the fact that a renewed round of chemo was going to ravage that glorious crown of thick copper hair.

she walked softly toward the bed, trying not to make any noise. but sharon wasn't sleeping. she rolled over as dylan came close, her green eyes bright and warm.

"oh...dylan...hi, baby." her voice was feathery, the only real physical giveaway in her that she was ill. she reached out and took dylan's gloved hand in a tight hold.

"how was the trip, sweetheart? when did you get back?"

shit. that's right - she'd supposedly extended her stay in europe. it seemed like a year had passed in the few days she'd been with rio.

"um, i just came home a little while ago," dylan answered, a partial lie.

she took a seat on the edge of the thin hospital room mattress, her hand still caught in her mother's clutching grasp.

"i got a little concerned when you changed your plans so abruptly. your e-mail that you were staying a bit longer by yourself was so short and cryptic. why didn't you call me?"

"i'm sorry," dylan said. the lie she had to keep hurt even worse knowing that she'd made her mom worry. "i would have called you if i could have. oh, mom...i'm sorry you don't feel well."

"i feel all right. better, now that you're here." sharon's gaze was steady, level with a calm resolve. "but i'm dying, baby. you do understand that, don't you?"

"don't say that." dylan squeezed her mom's hand, then brought the cool fingers up to her lips and kissed them. "you'll get through this, just like you did before. you're going to be fine."

the silence - the tender indulgence - was a palpable force in the room. her mother wasn't going to push the subject, but it was there, like a ghost lurking in the corner.

"well, let's talk about you instead. i want to hear all about what you've been doing, where you've been...tell me about everything you've seen while you were gone."

dylan glanced down, unable to hold her mother's eyes if she couldn't tell her the truth. and she couldn't tell her the truth. most of it would be unbelievable anyway, especially the part where dylan confessed that she feared she was developing feelings for a dangerous, secretive man. a vampire for crissake. it sounded crazy just to think the words.

"tell me more about that demon's lair story you're working on, baby. those pictures you sent me were really something. when is your story going to run?"

"there is no story, mom." dylan shook her head. she was sorry she ever mentioned it to her mother - or to anyone, for that matter. "turns out that cave was just a cave," she said, hoping to convince her. "nothing strange about it."

sharon looked skeptical. "really? but that tomb you found - and the incredible markings on the walls. what was all of that doing in there? it must have meant something."

"just a tomb. probably a very old, tribal burial chamber of some kind."

"and the picture you took of that man - "

"a vagrant, that's all," dylan lied, hating every syllable that passed her lips. "the pictures made everything seem more important than it was. but there is no story, not even one suitable for a rag like coleman hogg's paper. in fact, he let me go."

"what? he didn't!"

dylan shrugged. "yeah, he did. and it's fine, really. i'll find something else."

"well, that's his loss. you were too good for that place, anyway. if it's any consolation, i thought you did a great job on that story. mr. fasso thought so too. in fact, he mentioned he had contacts with some big news outlets in the city. he could probably find you something if i asked him to look into it."

oh, shit. a job interview was the last thing she needed to worry about. not when the rest of what she'd just heard had put a knot of dread in her throat. "mom - you didn't tell him about that story, did you?"

"you're darn right i did. i showed off your pictures too. i'm sorry, but i can't help bragging about you. you're my little star."

"who did you...ah, god, mom, please tell me you didn't talk about it with a lot of people...did you?"

sharon patted her hand. "don't be so shy. you're very talented, dylan, and you should be working on bigger, more hard-hitting stories. mr. fasso agrees with me. gordon and i talked all about you on the river cruise a couple of nights ago."

dylan's stomach was clenched over the thought of more people being privy to what she'd seen in that cave, but she couldn't help noticing the little glint of joy in her mother's eyes when she mentioned the man who founded the runaway shelter. "so, you're on a first-name basis with mr. fasso now, are you?"

sharon giggled, a sound so youthful and impish that dylan forgot for a moment that she was sitting beside her mom in a hospital room in the cancer ward. "he's very handsome, dylan. and utterly charming. i'd always thought him to be so aloof, almost chilly, but he's actually a very intriguing man."