Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [506]
“They beat her, calling her ugly things: Maldecido. Manos del diablo. La puta de infierno. Something snapped in me when I saw her blood run red on the ground. I leaped on one of the men. I was so furious I wanted him to die in agony…and he did. Once I understood what I’d done, I went after the next man. I bit him in the throat and fed on him as my touch slowly killed him.”
Dylan was staring at him now, saying nothing. Standing there, so very still.
“The last one looked up and saw what I’d done. He called me the same things he called my mother, then added two more names I’d never heard before: Comedor de la sangre. Monstruo. Blood-eater. Monster.” Rio exhaled a brittle laugh. “Until that moment, I didn’t know what I was. But as I killed the last of my mother’s attackers and watched as she lay dying in the sunlit grass, some knowledge buried deep within me seemed to come awake and rise up. I finally understood that I was different, and what that meant.”
“You were just a child,” Dylan said softly. “How did you survive after that?”
“For a while I went hungry. I tried feeding from animals, but their blood was like poison. I hunted my first human about a week after the attack. I was out of my mind with hunger, and I had no experience with finding my own food. I killed several innocent people those first few weeks I was on my own. I would have gone Rogue eventually, but then something miraculous happened. I was tracking prey in the woods when a huge shadow came out of the trees. It was a man, I thought, but he moved so fast and so stealthily I could hardly keep focus on him. He was hunting too. He went after the peasant I’d set my sights on, and with a grace I was sorely lacking, he brought the human down and began to feed from the wound he’d opened in the man’s throat. He was a blood-eater, like me.”
“What did you do, Rio?”
“I watched in fascination,” he said, remembering it as clearly as if it had just happened a few minutes ago.
“When it was over, the human got up and walked away as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. I was astonished, and when I drew in my breath, that’s when the blood-eater saw me hiding nearby. He called me out and after hearing that I was alone, he brought me with him to his home. It was a Darkhaven. I met many others like me, and learned that I was part of a race called the Breed. As my mother had not seen fit to give me a name, my new family in the Darkhaven gave me the one I have now.”
“Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio,” Dylan said, the words sounding far too sweet as she spoke them. Her hand, as she placed it tenderly on the scarred side of his face felt far too comforting. “My God, Rio…it’s a miracle you’re standing here with me at all.”
She moved closer to him now, looking up into his eyes. Rio could hardly breathe as she rose onto her toes and tilted his chin down to meet her kiss. Their lips came together for the second time that night…and with a need that neither one of them seemed willing or able to conceal.
He could have kissed her forever.
But it was at that precise moment that the quiet promenade erupted in a sudden cacophony of gunfire.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Four
Panic flooded Rio’s veins like acid.
The gunfire came again, another rapid report that split the night. The sharp staccato pops were coming from somewhere close; in his head they were cannon fire, the sound of them—the shock of a sudden attack—ripping through his senses, filling his mind with a thick fog that swallowed the here and now.
Dylan, he thought fiercely.
Had to keep her safe.
He was only barely conscious of his actions as he grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down onto the grass beneath him. Her cry of alarm was muted, more felt than heard as he covered her body with his, willing to sacrifice himself for her.
Protecting her was all that mattered.
But as they hit the hard earth together, Rio felt his mind splintering off. Past and