So instead of panicking over all the other things that could have killed me as I bounced from life to life, I play it cool.
"How do you know all of that?"
"Dragons are record keepers," Kai says. "Each clan chronicled its history from the first days and eventually that expanded to documenting everything we could find about other species. The chronicles don't just cover shifters but each of those as well."
Milos nods. "If a dragon found it, heard of it, explored it, you can bet your ass it's written down somewhere. And with each new discovery, we make sure to gather all information possible."
"Knowledge of potential enemies as well as allies." I nod and chew the fuck out of my thumb. "Makes sense."
"Right you are, little one." Henrich smiles. "However, this also means we've sadly witnessed the extinction of so many species over the years. Creatures that never find mates, creatures unable to procreate or adapt to the way the world changed around them. Little by little they've died off, and it only seemed right for us to continue recording what we could so they would not be forgotten."
Havok's thumb smoothes over the pulse thrumming in my neck as he leans toward me. "Do you wish him to continue? I fear you're on the verge of a panic attack."
"I'm ok," I lie, but take a deep breath. "I'm ok. I don't know why I'm so anxious about this. It's not like you're going to tell me I'm the last of some dying species or something."
But when Henrich's eyes shift to the four other men sitting at the table and they share one of those looks I want to punch off their faces, my pulse skyrockets.
"Henny? Right? I mean, I'm a human, that's been established since the first time we met. Right?" I can hear the panic in my own voice, my tone rising with each word.
"Another of the mystical beings that has supposedly been extinct for at least seven hundred years is something called fae." Henrich ignores my hysteria. “Fae were the original fairies, pixies, sprites, whatever you want to call them, but those myths originated with the actual species known as fae."
"Ok..." My thumb is going to be nothing but a stump after this.
Henrich lifts a huge book from his lap that I didn't realize he had, plops it on the table, then produces a significantly smaller one. "The fae spanned the globe, lived in every hemisphere, were indigenous to all lands. Fae were… well, how do I put it?" He looks to the others before Milos speaks up.
“Fae were the hippy naturalists of paranormal creatures."
Henrich rolls his eyes but nods. "I suppose that works. Fae had power over nature. Animals, plants, some could control and create the elements. Wherever fae lived, Mother Nature thrived. Much like dragons, fae were natural born healers, natural born warriors and protectors. As a matter of fact"—he opens the big book and turns to a marked page—"fae were shifter’s greatest allies for thousands of years."
Henrich turns the book our way and as my eyes land on a drawing, a beautiful depiction of a battlefield with shifters of all kinds, dragons the most prominent, fighting alongside beautiful, flawless beings with fair skin and dark hair, I smile a little.
They truly are majestic looking, but as I focus on the illustration I remember a vision, the one I had when I first saw Kai at Bill's.
The four brothers fighting wasn't actually what I saw.
I saw them but I saw their father too, and assumed it was the same battle, but it wasn't.
When I saw Bozidar he wasn't actually with Kai, it was a completely different battle he was fighting spliced with theirs.
He was fighting alongside many of these fae.
Weird how I didn't realize that before. Not that I would have known Bozi was leading an army of fae, but now that I’m thinking about it, those soldiers didn’t look anything like my dragons. They were too unique in appearance to be shifters or humans. They were built differently and had a more delicate element to their ferocity, and the more I focus on the vision, the more I realize they were nothing like what I originally thought they were. I just assumed that it was from the war that broke out while I knew them before, but now I see that it wasn't. Hind sight and all that, I suppose.
Havok's eyes move between me and the book, an unreadable expression on his face that has me chomping the shit out of my thumb.
He doesn't speak though, and I don't ask what he's thinking. I'm too much of a chicken shit for that.
Instead I ask, "So what happened to them? You said they've been extinct for at least seven hundred years, but if they were healers and warriors, why did they die out?"
Henrich sighs. "They were exterminated, so to speak."
I frown.
"Sometime during the early 1300s it was discovered that fae blood, their essence, held a great many desirable qualities and they were slowly killed off while trying to obtain them."
Havok slips his hand into mine and squeezes. "Vampires, angel. Vampires discovered that many of the traits fae possessed could be passed on through their blood. It was only temporary, but the nourishment, the extra skills obtained through feeding off of fae led the vampire king at the time to believe that they could somehow become permanent and would make them unstoppable."
I nod slowly. "So vampires started draining the fae in order to, what? Talk to animals? Grow trees with a snap of their fingers?"
