Chapter 37

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY WE ARE THE ANSWER!

We've been in Rhys' head for a whole year!

It's time for some extra content and a giveaway. More on that in the A/N at the bottom.

Enjoy the chapter ^_^

*****

Our silent ride ended at sunset when we reached my house. We had passed it by during our walk around the neighbourhood last weekend but it would be Riley's first time going inside.

And perhaps his last, my mind spoke and my heart constricted in pain.

"I hope you don't mind me bringing you here." I said, shutting the engine off. "I needed some place private and your apartment... Well, I never thought apartments were private; it always seems like the neighbours might overhear something."

His eyebrows furrowed and he shook his head. Whatever thoughts were going through it, he did not share them with me and I didn't ask him to; I was determined to get this talk over with as soon as possible.

"Let's do this." I got up and closed the car door with more force than necessary. Taking a slow breath, I walked to Riley's side and opened his door. He tried to stand, but was pulled down by his seatbelt.

He's nervous just like me, I thought as I leaned down, and pushed his fumbling hands aside to free him from his restraint.

"Thanks," he muttered, getting out of the vehicle.

We walked through my yard, Riley briefly taking in the house's appearance. It looked very much like my parents'; then again, most houses in our neighbourhood did.

I let him walk into the hallway first.

"Would you like a tour or...?" I offered. I needed to get this over with before the pressure became too much and I changed my mind, but I also needed to have Riley as relaxed as possible. If that meant postponing the talk so he can look around the house, so be it.

"No, let's... Let's talk."

I nodded, grateful with his decision, and led him into the living room. It was almost empty with one square table and two wooden chairs at the wall furthest from the door.

"We should probably sit," I suggested. "This will take a while."

Once we were on the chairs, I took a deep breath and started speaking, the words racing with one another in my haste to say what I had to.

"Once upon a time..." I'd barely started when I was cut off:

"I thought you brought me here to talk about the Bullets." Riley crossed his arms over his chest.

"I'm about to do just that," I assured him.

"But this sounds like a fairytale," he pointed out, annoyance lacing his words.

I could not blame him for his impatience.

I'd unintentionally teased him with little snippets of information about us that probably raised more questions than they'd answered. He was expecting me to finally open up and instead I'd started with a fairytale... Or so it would seem to him.

"It's... It may sound that way, but it's an important part of our folklore," I tried to explain, licking my dry lips.

"Alright." He leaned back in his chair and nodded, but his face told me he was still skeptical. "Go on."

"Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there lived a King, a Great King. Not great in morals, but great in power. He was a mighty and skilful warrior, but also a cruel one. He'd gathered vast wealth and numerous lands and had armies of hundreds under his command. But as the years passed, he realized he was running out of a valuable recourse: time."

"Time?" He repeated, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Yes, Riley, time. The King was growing old and his time on Earth was lessening. So he'd gathered people with special skills, people who could use magic..."

He interrupted me again - this time with a snort - and I sighed.

"There's no such thing as magic," he commented without a hint of doubt in his statement.

Oh, how much easier this would be if he believed otherwise!

"Will you please let me tell the story?" I begged.

Riley gave me another nod and I went on:

"He gathered in his castle people who could use magic. But real, strong magic belonged to the Spirits of Nature; the power of these humans wasn't enough for what task the King wanted them to perform. You see, Riley, the Great Kind wanted to defeat Death itself; he wanted to become immortal."

I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees.

"Eventually, one of the magic-users came up with the idea of the King's men capturing Spirits of Nature to harvest their power. Naturally, the Spirits were enraged at the audacity of the King's men and destroyed the King's army. However, they kept the Great King alive. They decided that they would give him what he'd always wanted, but on their own terms. They gave the King immortality by turning him into a horrible monster..."

Riley shook his head, his lips turning up in a disbelieving smile. I ignored it and continued:

"... A monster with skin the color of ash, fangs, claws and reddened eyes; a monster, doomed to be burnt by eternal hunger and thirst, one that would never again enjoy the light of sun on their skin."

"So they turned him into a vampire?" He asked through another snort, tapping his foot against the ground.

He was becoming more and more impatient, but I had to start from where it had all began. Knowing our origins might help Riley accept us.

"The first vampire," I said solemnly. "They chained him in a cave, obstructing the entrance with heavy metal bars and spells. As the months passed, the few surviving men who were loyal to the King - men, just as cruel as him - gathered and with promises of wealth enticed even more men, including some who could use magic. They formed a small army led by the king's most trusted General and entered the cave. It took them days to destroy the bars, but they worked eagerly, longing for the promised gold..."

"Where was the gold at?"

"The King had hidden it."

"Why didn't the Spirits take it?"

I was becoming really irritated with my mate. I understood that in his mind this wasn't what we came here to discuss, that he probably viewed it as a waste of time, but he was acting like a child. An impatient, sulky, disrespectful child.

"What would the Spirits of nature do with gold, Riley?" I asked in turn, trying to hold on to my composure.

"I don't know. It's just a fairytale."

"Anyway." I cleared my throat. "The men entered the cave. At first, the King stood still as if he was dead, but as soon as they took the chains off, the King went berserk. Savaged by his insatiable hunger, he attacked the men with speed and ferocity they could not counter. He killed them, all of them..." I swallowed a heavy lump; I was lucky enough to have never seen them, but I knew what atrocities Nighters were capable of. "... By ripping their throats with his teeth and claws and feasting on their blood."

"Who is telling this story?"

His genuine curiosity caught me off guard.

"What do you mean who by 'who is telling this story'?"

"I mean, if everyone died, except for the now inhuman King, who was the first person to tell the story, to spread the knowledge of what happened there..." He paused and laughed. "I'm sorry. I forgot that fairytales don't actually have to make sense. Go on. You were at the point where he was feeding," he reminded me.

"Yes." I nodded. "During the attack on his men, the King got injured and his blood somehow soaked through his General's wounds. It brought the General back to life. After his initial rampage, the King had managed to regain some of his sense. He even managed to control his General until the later also became sentient. Even though they craved and needed the blood of others, they were rational enough to form an alliance. The Great King now had a new goal: to make an army of monsters like himself and bring horror to humans and Spirits alike. That way not only would he feed, but he'd also get revenge for the curse the Spirits placed on him."

I chewed my bottom lip. It was hard to imagine the scale of the war that followed, let alone speak of it.

"They were hard to kill, these vampires," I went on, "and it was easy and quick to make more. The King didn't even need for them to become reasonable - well, as reasonable as vampires could become - in order for them to spread terror. Humans were no match for them and the Spirits of Nature had lessened in number because of the hunts he'd subjected them to when he was still human."

I halted my story again, looking at my mate, trying to convey with my eyes the truth behind my words.

"In order to protect themselves, humans and Spirits joined forces, the latter offering the first to make them stronger."

"Like they made the King stronger?" He sneered. I could somewhat understand that. The Spirits were wise, but they had made a mistake with the King's punishment; yes, they had condemned him, but they'd also made him stronger.

"They cursed the King, Riley; they wouldn't do that to the innocent humans," I told him. "What they offered was to give some of them the power to... change."

"Change?" He leaned back, tilting his head to the side.

"Into something else. Into an animal, but one that could keep its human rationality." I stressed the last part. Riley needed to know that shifters were different from Nighters in more than appearance. "The animals had to be relatively the size of the humans so people could not turn into something as small as a mouse or as large as an elephant. The humans chose to turn into animals like lions, bears and wolves. The Spirits warned them that for the change to be possible, they'd have to put the soul of the chosen animal into the person's body; they also warned that if the animal was stronger than the person, it could take over and the person would forever remain in animal form, losing his or her rationality. The last warning was about their offspring: the children of these first shape shifters would be born with both a human and an animal soul and will be shifters as well."

I stopped once more and awaited his questions. There were none.

"Once the humans and animals were combined, those who kept their sense led the war against the vampires along with the Spirits and the Gifteds."

"Gifteds?"

"Humans with supernatural abilities," I briefly explained. I had no desire to elaborate - Gifteds were irrelevant right now - but Riley seemed slightly intrigued.

"You mean the ones who could use magic?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes they are just faster and stronger than ordinary humans." I replied, then hurried to get back on topic:

"After months of bloody battles, it seemed that the vampires would win. As I said, they were hard to kill and they could easily make more of themselves as long as there were humans around; Spirits and shape shifters don't turn."

And thank God for that! Who knew what monster would result in a cross between a shifter and a Nighter.

"But at some point a number of these vampires, the ones that had once been Gifteds, regained enough of their reason and memories to manage to use their thirst against the rest of the vampires. They joined the shifters and the Spirits and in the end, they won what is now known as the First Great War. To show their gratitude, the Spirits lessened the curse that was passed from the King onto those of his victims, who had betrayed him for humanity's sake. They were still vampires, and they still needed blood to survive, but their thirst diminished, allowing them to control it with more ease; they could now walk under the sun and reproduce as humans do instead of through murdering and then reviving others with their blood. They became known as the Dayers and the remaining of the other vampires - the ones who were under the full strength of the curse because they still supported the King - are known as Nighters."

"That's kind of lame," Riley murmured.

"Yeah, I guess." I shrugged it off. "But I didn't tell you all of this so we could discuss terms and names, Riley."

"Then why did you tell me?"

My hands were clammy and I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

This was it.

The moment I'd been dreading ever since I'd met my human mate, the moment that would be the start of my new life; a happy one or one in which I'd never smile again - my fate was in the hands of Riley.

"Because it's not just a story, Riley," I whispered, looking straight into his eyes, lit up by the mood light that came through the large window. I couldn't get my voice to cooperate and my next words were barely audible:

"The First Great War is real and so are the creatures I told you about. I'm one of them."

*****

A/N: So, what do you think of the legend?

How many of you remember it from You are the Answer?

Did you enjoy the chapter?

If so, show the birthday book some love and click on the VOTE button!

And now... For the birthday goodies!

The links to the sneak peek from Alec's story and the Which YATA Character Are You quiz are in the first comment and the GIVEAWAY is right here!

PS: Ch. 38 will be up by the end of the week.