dylan smiled. "you like him."

"i do," her mother confessed. "just my luck i should find a real gentleman - who knows, maybe my true prince? - when it's too late for me to fall in love."

dylan shook her head, hating to hear that kind of talk from her. "it's never too late, mom. you're still young. you have a lot of living left to do."

shadows crossed her mother's eyes as she looked up at dylan from her recline on the bed. "you've always made me so very proud. you know that, don't you, baby?"

dylan nodded, throat constricted. "yeah, i know. i could always count on you, mom. you were the only one in my life that i could count on. still are. two musketeers, right?"

sharon smiled at the mention of their long-running reference to themselves, but there were tears glistening in her eyes. "i want you to be all right, dylan. with this, i mean. with my leaving you soon...with the fact that i'm going to die."

"mom - "

"hear me out, please. i worry about you, sweetheart. i don't want you to be alone."

dylan wiped at a hot tear that ran down the side of her face. "you shouldn't be thinking about me now. just focus on you, on getting better. you need to think positively. the biopsy might not - "

"dylan. stop, and listen to me." her mother sat up, a stubborn look that dylan recognized very well coming over her pretty but fatigued features. "the cancer is back, worse than before. i know it. i feel it. and i've come to terms with it. i need to know that you will be able to come to terms with this too."

dylan looked down at their clasped hands, hers masked in yellow latex, her mother's nearly translucent, the bones and tendons stark beneath the cool, too-pale skin.

"how long have you been looking after me, baby? and i don't mean just since i've been sick. from the time you were a little girl, you were always worrying about me and trying your best to take care of me."

dylan shook her head. "we look out for each other. that's how it's always been - "

gentle fingers came up under her chin, lifting her gaze. "you're my child. i've lived for you, and for your brothers too, but you were always my constant. you shouldn't have had to live for me, dylan. you shouldn't have had to be the adult in this relationship. you should have someone to take care of you."

"i can take care of myself," she murmured, not very convincingly when the tears were streaming down her cheeks now.

"yes, you can. and you have. but you deserve something more out of life. i don't want you to be afraid to live, or to love, dylan. can you promise me that?"

before dylan could say anything, the door swung open and one of the attending nurses came in with a couple new bags of fluids. "how we doing, sharon? how's your pain right now?"

"i could use a little something," she said, her eyes sliding to dylan as if she'd been hiding her discomfort until now.

which, of course, she had been. everything was much worse than dylan wanted to accept. she got up from the bed and let the nurse do her thing. after she was gone, dylan came back over to her mother's side. it was so hard not to break down, to be the strong one as she looked down into the soft green eyes and saw that the spark in them - the fight that needed to be there - was gone.

"come here and give me a hug, baby."

dylan leaned down and wrapped her arms around the delicate shoulders, unable to dismiss the fragility of her mother's entire being. "i love you, mom."

"and i love you." sharon sighed as she settled back against the pillow. "i'm tired, sweetheart. i need to rest now."

"okay," dylan answered, her voice thick. "i'll just stay here with you while you sleep."

"no, you won't." her mother shook her head. "i won't have you sitting here worrying about me. i'm not going to leave you tonight, or the next day, or even next week - i promise. but you need to go home now, dylan. i want that for you."

home, dylan thought, as her mother drifted off to a drug-induced sleep. the word felt oddly empty to her when she pictured her apartment and the few possessions she had there. that wasn't home to her. if she had to go somewhere now, somewhere she felt safe and protected, that pitiful hole in the wall wasn't it. never really had been.

dylan rose from the bed and turned to leave the room. as she wiped at her teary eyes, her gaze lit on a shadowed face and broad shoulders silhouetted by the hallway lights outside.

rio.

he'd found her, followed her there.

where her every instinct should have been to run away from him, dylan went to him instead. she pulled open the door and met him outside her mother's room, incapable of speaking as she wrapped her arms around his solid warmth and wept softly into his chest.

chapter twenty-three

he hadn't expected her to run to him when she saw him standing there.

now that dylan was in his arms, her body trembling as she cried, rio found himself at a complete loss. he'd worked up a healthy amount of anger and suspicion in the time it took him to track her across the city. his head was ringing from all the noise, and from the endless, overcrowded presence of humans everywhere he looked. his temples were screaming from the bright lights, all of his senses battering him from within.

but none of that mattered in the long moments he stood there, holding dylan, feeling her shake with bone-deep fear and anguish. she was hurting, and rio felt an overwhelming need to protect her. he didn't want to see her in pain like this.

madre de dios, but he hated seeing her this way.

he caressed her delicate back, pressed his mouth to the top of her head where it nestled beneath his chin, murmuring quiet words of reassurance. feeble gestures, but all he could think to do for her.

"i'm so afraid i'm going to lose her," she whispered. "oh, god, rio...i'm terrified."

he didn't have to guess at who dylan was talking about. the patient sleeping in the adjacent room had the same creamy coloring, the same fiery-hued hair as the younger version rio was holding in his embrace.

dylan tilted her tear-streaked face up at him. "will you take me out of here, please?"

"i'll take you anywhere you want to go." rio smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, erasing the wet tracks. "do you want to go home?"

her sad little laugh sounded so broken, lost, somehow. "can we just...walk for a little while?"

"yeah. sure." he nodded, tucking her under his arm. "let's get out of here."

they walked in silence, down to the elevator and then out of the hospital to the warm night outside. he didn't know where to take her, so he just walked with her. a few blocks up from the hospital was a footbridge that led to the east river promenade. they crossed it, and as they strolled along the water's edge, rio felt people staring at him as they passed on the walkway.

there were furtive glances at his scars, and more than one wondering look that seemed to question what he was doing with a beauty like dylan. a damn good question, and one he didn't have a sensible answer for at the moment. he'd brought her into the city on a mission - one that sure as hell didn't allow for detours like this.

dylan slowed at last, pausing at the iron rail to look over the water. "my mom got really sick last fall. she thought it was bronchitis. it wasn't. the verdict was lung cancer, even though she never smoked a day in her life." dylan went quiet for a long moment. "she's dying. that's what she just told me tonight."

"i'm sorry," rio said, drawing up next to her.

he wanted to touch her, but he wasn't sure she needed his consolation - wasn't sure she'd accept it. instead he settled for touching a strand of her loose red hair, easier to pretend he was catching the errant tendril from blowing into her face on the light summer breeze.

"i wasn't supposed to be on that trip to europe. it was going to be her big adventure with her friends, but she wasn't well enough to go so i took her place. i wasn't supposed to be there. i never would have set foot in that damn cave. i never would have met you."

"now you wish you could undo it." he didn't ask the question, merely stated what had to be simple fact.

"i do wish i could undo it, for her. i wish she could have had her adventure. i wish she wasn't sick." dylan turned her head and looked at him. "but i don't wish i could undo meeting you."

rio was stunned silent by her admission. he brought his hand up to the soft line of her jaw, looking down into a face so fair and beautiful it stole his breath. and the way she was gazing up at him - as if he were a man worthy of her, a man she could love...

she exhaled a quiet, unsteady breath. "i would take it all back in a second, rio. but not this. not you."

ah, cristo.

before he could tell himself it was a bad idea, rio bent his head down and kissed her. it was a gentle meeting of their mouths, a tender brush of lips that shouldn't have made him burn like it did. he reveled in the sweet taste of her, in the way she felt so right in his arms.

he shouldn't want this so badly. he shouldn't feel this need, this tender affection that was kindling inside him every time he thought about dylan.

he shouldn't be pulling her closer to him, splaying his fingers into the warm silk of her hair as he brought her deeper into his embrace, lost in her kiss.

it took him a long time to break it. but even after he lifted his head, he couldn't stop caressing her face. he couldn't let go of her.

a group of teenagers shuffled past them on the promenade, rowdy human boys in clothes several sizes too big for them, talking loudly and shoving at one another as they went. rio kept his eyes on the youths, suspicion spiking as he watched the gang pause near the railing and take turns spitting over the edge. they didn't seem overtly dangerous, but they did appear to be the types perpetually ready for trouble.

"demetrio?"

rio glanced down at dylan, confused. "hmm?"

"am i getting close? your real name, i mean...is it demetrio?"

he smiled, and couldn't resist kissing the freckled tip of her nose. "no, that's not it."

"okay. well, then, is it...arrio?" she guessed, beaming up at him in the moonlight as she stepped slightly out of his arms. "oliverio? denny terrio?"

"eleuterio," he said.

her eyes widened. "ay-lay-oo-what?"

"my full name is eleuterio de la noche atanacio."

"wow. i guess that does make 'dylan' seem a bit mundane, huh?"

rio chuckled. "nothing about you is mundane, i assure you."

her smile was surprisingly shy. "so, what does it mean - a gorgeous name like that?"

"a loose translation would be 'he who is free and of the night everlasting.'"

dylan sighed. "that's beautiful, rio. my god, your mother must have adored you to give you an amazing name like that."

"it wasn't my mother's doing. she was killed when i was very young. the name came later, from a breed family living in a darkhaven in my homeland. they found me, and took me in as one of their own."

"what happened to your mother? i mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't - i know, i ask too many questions," she said, shrugging apologetically.

"no, i don't mind telling you," he said, finding it remarkable that he really meant that.

as a rule, he hated talking about his past. no one in the order knew the details surrounding his awful beginnings, not even nikolai, whom he considered his closest friend. there'd been no need to talk about it with eva, since they'd met in the spanish darkhaven where rio was raised and she knew his ignoble history.

eva had politely chosen to ignore the ugly facts surrounding his birth and the years he'd spent as a foundling, killing because he had to, because he didn't know any better. the young savage he'd been before he was brought into the darkhaven and shown how to live like something better than the animal he'd had to become in order to survive on his own.

rio didn't want to see dylan look upon him in fear or disgust, but a bigger part of him wanted to give her the truth. if she could look at his outward scars and not despise him, maybe she would be strong enough to see the ones that ruined him on the inside too.

"my mother lived on the outskirts of a very small, rural village in spain. she was just a girl - perhaps sixteen - when she was raped by a vampire who'd gone rogue." rio kept his voice low to avoid being overheard, but the nearest humans - the group of adolescent thugs still amusing themselves several yards down the promenade - were paying no attention anyway. "the rogue fed on her as he violated her, but my mother fought back. she bit him, apparently. enough of his blood entered her mouth, and, subsequently, her body. since she was a breedmate, the combination of blood and seed resulted in a pregnancy."

"you," dylan whispered. "oh, god, rio. how terrible for her to go through that. but at least she had you in the end."

"it was a wonder she didn't rout me out of her womb," he said, looking out at the black, glistening river and remembering his mother's anguish over the abomination she'd given birth to. "my mother was a simple country girl. she wasn't educated, not in the traditional sense, or in life matters. she lived alone in a cottage in the forest, cast out by her kin years before i came along."

"what for?"

"manos del diablo," rio replied. "they feared her devil's hands. you remember how i told you that all females born with the breedmate mark also have special gifts...psychic abilities of some sort?"

dylan nodded. "yes."

"well, my mother's gift was dark. with a touch and a focused thought, she could deliver death." rio scoffed under his breath and held up his own lethal hands. "manos del diablo."