My hands were clasped around a large mug of tea. Ezra sat on the sofa next to me in the library. Orange light and dark shadows from the fireplace danced across the surface of his skin.

   I had pulled my legs up in front of me as I listened to him.

   "I'm not sure how we do it," Ezra answered my question. "But we all can."

   "That doesn't make any sense. How can we suddenly have a supernatural power if we are basically the same as before?"

   Ezra shrugged, "I don't think it is supernatural, not really. I think everyone has the ability." He relaxed and leaned against the back of the sofa further. "If we really are human, like everyone else... Mind you no one really knows one way or the other, then I believe fading is an ability we all have, even mortals."

I scowled back at him, skeptical.

   Ezra half smiled and continued. "They just don't control it consciously the way we do. You know how some people can persuade and control other people so easily. We all hear of people who can sway hundreds and thousands of followers into mass hysteria, murder, suicide... they can influence the throngs of people and convince them to behave in ways and do things they would never do otherwise. It's all the same thing. When we fade, we are just projecting what we want people to believe. We are simply convincing them that we aren't really there. But with our boost of electric energy and adrenaline, it's simply easier for us. Some mortals are better at tapping into that part of themselves than others."

   I thought about that while I sipped my tea. "Do you think we are human?"

   "Yes."

   "Why?"

   "Because we are born to normal human parents. Mortals. And we can have children with mortals." He turned to the fire for a moment before looking back at me. "Only humans can breed with other humans."

   "Avati can have children?" I caught myself as soon as the words left my mouth. I wasn't sure why that was so shocking to me. I hadn't thought about it one way or the other before. I took a moment to examine my surprise, and I realized I must have assumed Avati couldn't. It would be a cruel fate to have children spread across thousands of years only to watch them each die one by one.  I couldn't quite bring myself to sit down and really think about how everyone I knew would one day be dead.  Some people hadn't even been born yet that I would watch go to their graves. It was a cold and lonely thought.

   Ezra nodded. "We can until we cross over. Once you change the electricity in your body is too much. It makes our bodies inhospitable."

   I nodded again slightly relieved and very grateful I never had any children, and never really considered the idea enough to miss it. The idea was simply too chilling. I pulled my legs up closer and gestured to Ezra, "You were going to tell me how you learned to fade."  

   He nodded and dipped his head toward me. "For hundreds of years, maybe more than a thousand, I had no idea what I was." He turned and sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, his left arm draped across the back of the sofa. "Most of my memories from the first few thousand years are distorted and confusing. I know I was a slave in a large house the first time I met another immortal like me."

   "A man had traveled up from the south and had stopped at my master's home on his way north." He looked calm as he spoke, but the muscles in his neck were pulled tense.

"Where was this?" I asked.

   He looked at me and shook his head. "I don't know. Southern Turkey, maybe, or Syria. I'd been traveling south for some time when I could. The man brought a few of his concubines with him. Her name was Hattu, and she explained to me what I was. She said there were others like us where she lived." His voice trailed off then.

   "And she taught you how to fade?" I prodded. He smiled and shook his head. "No, the man left a few days later and took her with him."

   "What happened to her?" I asked.

   "I don't know," he replied. "I never saw her again."

   "Never?" I echoed quietly. He shook his head.

   "A long time passed, hundreds of years later, I was living in a small fishing village... somewhere on the eastern Mediterranean coast. A ship with a raiding party attacked my village. I had grown strong by then, but I was heavily outnumbered. I knew I couldn't fight them all off. I knew I'd either be killed, my body dumped in a ditch, or I'd be captured and sold as a slave... again. I would not be a slave again. I would force them to kill me if I had to, but there was a chance I would lose. I stood in a dark corner near the stables and willed them not to see me.

   "Several of the raiders passed by and looked right into the corner where I was standing. They couldn't see me and walked right by." He smiled strangely at the memory. "Everyone in my village was either dead or captured. I was stunned. It took me some time to work out what I had done to make myself disappear."

   "Were you always a slave in the beginning?"

   "No, I would go years sometimes learning one trade or another. But, there would always be a time when my village was attacked, or I was ambushed." He looked across at me and frowned slightly. "Some masters were worse than others. Several let me earn my freedom. A few decades after I escaped that raiding party, I was captured by another slaver. I had been attacked while on the beach. He saw me heal after I had been stabbed through the chest." He leaned against the back of the sofa and swiveled his head toward me. "He planned to use me as a mercenary or in the fighting pits. I was still healing and weak. It was the desert, so there was no shade and nowhere to hide to fade."

   "Does fading work at night?" I wondered.

   "Sometimes," he answered. "If there is a large enough source of light that you can stand just outside of, then yes. But it's difficult and unpredictable during the day and even more so at night."

   "I spent two days chained," he continued, "walking behind his cart before I was strong enough to fight." He paused a few moments and looked at me. "That was the first time I ever killed a man."

   He was watching me, trying to read my reaction. I looked across at him. He had a lean but muscular body, long arms with broad shoulders. He stood a little taller than me, maybe just under six feet. He would've been prized stock, as disgusting as the thought was. I tried to imagine what it must have been like one lifetime after the other, captive in such a brutal and deadly world, under the constant threat of pain and death.

   Death would have been welcome in such an instance. Would he allow himself to die to escape? Images of what a slave would have to do to induce his master to kill him, execution, torture... or perhaps take matters into his own hands. How easy was it to simply allow yourself to die, to be killed? If this man had seen him healed so quickly and knew he wouldn't die, how could he break away?

   I looked back at him and nodded. I understood.

   The muscles around his eyes relaxed. A soft smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he brushed the hair from my face. Heat rushed beneath my skin as my heart drummed against my ribs. His fingers lightly marked the skin on my temple and slowly slid down to my jawline.

   The light shifted. It grew brighter, and I felt a breeze touch my skin. Geometric patterns on a rug swept before my eyes. I looked up. Ezra was standing near a doorway. His hair had been cropped short, and he was wearing a dark grey tunic with leggings that stopped below the knee. There was a wide belt at his waist with a sword buckled to it. He was pacing, agitated and growling loudly.

   At the same time, I felt Ezra gently press his palm against the side of my face.

   The air smelled damp. I turned my gaze to see an old woman sitting on a wooden pallet. Her face was heavily lined. Dark hair streaked with grey draped along either side of her face. Ezra turned away from her and growled again.

   The woman shook her head. "Wars, blood is upon us." 

   Ezra growled and stomped the ground. He pulled out his sword and gripped it tightly. "You think they care about blood? They water their crops with it."

   I felt Ezra jerk back. The vision vanished. Ezra's face was pulled tight, confused. "What did you say?"

   I wasn't sure what he meant. "Did I say it too?" I muttered to myself.

   "What do you mean too?"

   I didn't know what to say. "I saw you in a small room," I sputtered. "You had a sword and were dressed in some kind of roughspun," I stopped, trying to retain the details of what I'd seen. "You were angry about something."

   "You saw this?"

   "There was an old woman in the room," I continued. "She said..."

   "Bella sanguinem currunt," Ezra interrupted.

   I shook my head, confused. "It's Latin," he said. "It's what you said."

   I was speaking in Latin?

   "What else do you see?"

   "Not much," I answered. "The woman seemed sad... resigned. You were angry and pacing the room. That's all."

   His voice softened slightly. "What did the room look like?"

   I closed my eyes and thought. "Ummm... small. The walls were white, stone covered with some kind of earth, similar to adobe." I tried to recall any other details. "It was near the water. I could hear the waves."

   "Histria," he said to himself. "Nidia."

   I gaped back at him, nearly speechless. "You mean that was real?" He nodded. He wasn't looking at me anymore. His eyes were unfocused, thoughts racing. I wanted to ask who or what Nidia was, but he was miles away... years away.   What was this? Was I having visions? Why?

   "It wasn't the first time," I told him.

   "What do you mean?"

   "Earlier today, when you kissed me. I saw..." my voice trailed off. What had I seen?

   He steeled himself, becoming stone again. "Did you see me?" I nodded. "What did you see?" he asked.

   "You were outside. It was warm. You had a kind of cone-like basket hung around your neck. You were picking grapes that were growing in a large arch over your head." I moved my hands in a curve over my own head to demonstrate.

   He tensed, vibrating just under the surface then smoothed. I don't know how long we sat there. Finally, he looked up at me. "It's late. I should get you home."

   In an instant, Ezra had transformed into a stranger and anxiety burned in my stomach. Retrieving my laptop, Ezra opened the door for me as we walked to the car.

   He drove me home in silence, never taking his eyes off the road stretching out in front of him. Danger radiated from him in an obscure way, softening at the edges. I stared quietly out the window and listened to my heart, thumping ominously as pulled up in front of my building.  I sighed quietly to myself and moved to open the door. He softly wrapped his fingers around my wrist to stop me. "Kaja," he said. I turned to look at him.

   "One of the books I read was a story of some Avati who could take people's memories and weave time." He rubbed his hand across his forehead and continued. "And the Goddess of Shadows... it said she was chained by the shadows to hide her powers from men," he finished. "Mortals, maybe immortals too," he said when I didn't answer.

   "She could tell when someone was lying or deceitful," I continued for him. Where was this going?

   "In most of the stories I read, the god or immortal was hidden away for a time, and they possessed some kind of supernatural power." I nodded. "I think there is another type of Avati in the world that stay hidden from the rest of us. And I think you're one of them."

   He looked desperate. How did everything get so complicated so quickly?

   "You're going to disappear again, aren't you?" A warning feeling was creeping through me. Ezra kept his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel and looked out over the hood. "There is information about us out there if you know where to look," he said, deflecting my question. "I need to see if I can discover what it means."

   "Are you going to come back?"

   He shook his head. "It's better for you not to have too much contact with the rest of us until you're more experienced and stronger. You should be able to live your life without us interfering." I turned toward the window. "Kaja, it's the best way." He said it so quietly it was almost inaudible. 

   "Alright." I opened the door and made my way up the front steps. After I turned on my light, I walked over to the window and looked down at the street. Ezra was pulling away from the curb. Darkness inched over me.

   My life had changed irrevocably in only a few short weeks. I was a weak and fragile immortal who wasn't accustomed to being thought of as either. I had seen visions of Ezra's past as clearly as I could see him in the present, and I didn't know what that meant.

   Ezra's face had turned hard and sharp when I described my visions. I didn't know what that meant either.

   "It's too late," I told myself.

       When he was young, Ezra cared about the details of life. The people, each new experience, each day, each death was all that mattered. After so many years he was starting to pay attention to the details again, but they were so tiny they were easy to miss.

   Ezra pulled out his cell phone and rapidly typed a text. His mind was racing, full of anxiety as he drove. Ezra weaved into his driveway half an hour later. A silver Aston Martin was parked in front of the house. Leif swung open the door and stepped out as Ezra killed the engine.

   "Alright. What happened?"

   Ezra huffed in frustration and jerked his head for Leif to follow. "I have to show you something." Leif followed him to the den. Ezra turned on the computer monitor; the image of the clay tablet dominated the screen. Leif turned to Ezra nonplused. "Alright. What is it?"

   "It's an image of the Sumerian text Mathas sent me."

   Leif grinned back at Ezra. "Great, I knew you could talk him into it."

   Ezra quickly summarized the story of the goddess for him. Then he told Leif the other tales of immortal beings living in hiding he had discovered. Leif nodded, "It's interesting and a step toward understanding why Kaja wasn't binding with us, but I'm not seeing the urgency in all this."

"She has visions."

   "I'm sorry, what?"

   "When I touched her, she had a vision." Leif narrowed his eyes as he listened. Ezra continued, "Of my past."

   "You touched her?" Leif asked. Trust Leif to zero in on that point, Ezra thought. "When? Where?"

   "Here. Today."

   "You had her here, in your house? Today?" Ezra didn't reply. "What are you doing, Brother?" 

   Ezra grumbled lightly.

   Leif leaned into him, "You can hear her heartbeat better than I can. Her adrenaline is all over the place. Leave her be, Ezra. She doesn't need you mucking about. Just do the right thing."

   Ezra frowned. "There's no such thing."

   Leif made a noise in the back of his throat and leaned back into his chair. "This is new."

   Ezra turned confused. "What are you talking about?"

   "The way you've been responding to this... to her. Like you can't wait to take her to bed."

   Ezra glared and stiffened. "I'm not going to bed her." 

   "No?" Leif shook his head. "I know that look. I've seen it in the mirror enough times to recognize it."

   Ezra ground his teeth. There was no point in discussing anything with Leif once he started talking about sex. He had no intention of taking the girl to bed. She was strange. There were too many things that didn't make sense. The rules were simple. But some of the rules didn't seem to apply to her.

   Leif tilted his head slightly. "She had a vision of you, in your past when you touched her," Leif said more to himself than to Ezra. "In all your years you never heard of nor suspected this before?"

   "No," he answered. "You know the legends. All the stories about us eventually become warped and combined with other myths." He exhaled slowly through his nose. "I fell prey to the same folly as mortal humans. I only paid attention to the parts that were about me and disregarded the rest as fabrications. I forgot that even the most ridiculous myths are always based on truth."

   "And you think she's like the other immortals in those legends?" 

   Ezra frowned and looked at the ground.

   Leif looked up and smiled. "Well, Old Man... I guess we're going to have to find one."

Do you think Kaja is like the immortals of legends?

TEASER: A small shiver bloomed across my shoulder blades as I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.