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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."
Dylan was quiet for a moment, studying him in silence. "You have that ability as well?"
"A Breedmate mother passes down many traits to her sons: hair, skin, and eye color...as well as her psychic gifts. I think if my mother had known exactly what was growing in her belly, she would have killed me long before I was born. She did try at least once, after the fact."
Dylan's brow creased, and she gently placed her hand over his where it rested on the iron grate. "What happened?"
"It's one of my first vivid memories," Rio confessed. "You see, Breed offspring are born with small, sharp fangs. Right out of the womb, they need blood to survive. And darkness. My mother must have figured all of this out on her own, and tolerated it, because somehow I made it out of infancy. To me, it was perfectly natural to avoid the sun and to take my mother's wrist for nourishment. I think I must have been about four years old when I first noticed that she cried every time she had to feed me. She despised me - despised what I was - yet I was all she had."
Dylan stroked the back of his hand. "I can't even imagine how it must have been for you. For both of you."
Rio shrugged. "I knew no other way to live. But my mother did. On this particular day, with our cottage shutters bolted tight to ward off daylight, my mother offered me her wrist. When I took it, I felt her other hand come up around the back of my head. She held it there, and the pain jolted me like a bolt of lightning arrowing into my skull. I cried out and opened my eyes. She was weeping, great, terrible sobs as she fed me and held my head in her hand."
"Jesus Christ," Dylan whispered, her shock evident.
