Page 65 of Bearing Secrets
“It doesn’t affect you,” he said calmly. “So, it never came up. But yes, there is an entire world full of paranormal creatures and such out there. Mages aren’t the only ones. You humans are just a part of it all.”
Her quest to feed them both was entirely forgotten about for the moment as she struggled to grasp the implications of what he was saying.
“How do we not know about this? What else is there?”
Kirell thought about it, and while he did, she started forward again, rethinking her earlier thoughts. Now waspreciselythe right time for food. She needed it to help her digest all this new information he was giving her.
Her original mission had been to come comfort him, to help him get over it, but now she wanted to learn as much as possible.
Maybe this will help distract him too? Focus his attention on something else, so that he doesn’t have time to think about his friend. Ex-friend.
“I suppose I should just give you a history lesson on shifters,” he suggested as the elevator doors closed.
“Why not just start from the beginning of this magic stuff?”
“Not much is known about it before we came onto the scene,” he admitted. “Not to us, at least… and the others, well, they aren’t sharing.”
“I see.” She didn’t, but that was neither here nor there. The last thing Natalia wanted to do now was distract him, to do something that would bring him back to the present. This was serving both of their benefits. She could see Kirell coming to life as he talked about something that wasn’t painful.
It felt good to see. It made her happy he wasn’t hurting, at least for the moment. Not to mention that she enjoyed being at his side, though she didn’t want to admit it to anyone, least of all herself.
“It all goes back to just before the fall of Rome.” Kirell adopted a storyteller tone as he spoke, and she fought to keep a smile down. “The Senate was in power, having overthrown the last Emperor centuries earlier. But they were corrupt. Evil. And also, entirely composed of vampires.”
Natalia blinked. “I’m sorry. Did you just say that the Roman Senate was made up of vampires?”
“At the time of the fall of Rome? Yes. We’re not sure if they always were, or if they slowly infiltrated it to take over. That part has been lost to the ages.” Kirell shrugged helplessly. “It was about that time that the first shifters appeared, rapidly increasing in numbers.” He smirked. “The Romans termed usbarbarians.Yet they were the ones who drank blood. Hypocrites.”
She snorted at the humor of it all but didn’t interrupt. This was a very different history lesson than any she’d received before.
“The barbarians eventually sacked Rome, as you may know. The Senate was killed. Every vampire was hunted down and killed. In the span of a year or so, they went from undisputed power holders in my world, to being extinct. It was the biggest transfer of power that had ever happened.” His eyes grew cold and dark. “And the Mages weren’t happy about it. Not one bit. They struck at us without warning, attacking from the shadows and organizing the masses against us.”
Natalia was hooked on every word. History had never been of huge interest to her, but then again, she’d never heard it told likethisbefore. She found herself craving more, and not just because she wanted to keep Kirell talking.
They entered the kitchen, which she discovered was more like a cafeteria, with several workers behind a counter preparing orders from a pre-determined menu. They ordered and sat down after snagging drinks from a nearby fridge.
“Keep going,” she urged, leaning across the table and watching his face as he spoke, enraptured. “I don’t know how history doesn’t seem to know any of this.”
Kirell smiled at her. “History is written by the victors, remember? They made sure to erase all evidence of it, and ruthlessly hunted down anyone who tried. A few texts here and there made it through, but most of the time it was discredited, because nobody believed it.”
“That makes sense,” she was forced to admit. “What happened with the Mages?”
“We fought each other for centuries. The Dark Ages was called that for a reason. We tried to go underground, to just live peacefully, but they wouldn’t let us. They hunted us, and they were organized and much more powerful back then. We struck back, of course. The Black Death, or plague? You’ve heard of that, right?”
She nodded silently.
“It only targeted magic users, wiped them out in droves, even those who had so little power they didn’t even realize what they had. It drastically evened the playing field for us, a last-ditch effort that succeeded. But they didn’t stop there, of course. The Spanish Inquisition, if you’ve heard of it? Not religious persecution, but actually a cover to try and expose us.”
“Really?”
“Really. It nearly worked too. We were almost eliminated.”
“Unbelievable.”
“We fled, then. There was finally somewhere we could go shortly after it started up.”
“What do you mean?” Then her brain caught up to her question. “The New World. You came to America.”
He nodded. “Many of the original settlers were shapeshifters.” He looked unhappy for a moment. “Probably why they got along so poorly with the natives, who had their own form of magic. The skinwalkers weren’t exactly happy to see another race with the same powers as them.” He looked away. “Not our proudest moments, but we were desperate.”
