Colors swirled in front of me in a dizzying frenzy. I was struggling to open my eyes, but it was an arduous task. Finally I was able to lift my head and tried to swallow. My mouth felt dry and bitter. I groaned lightly as a wave of nausea washed over me.

   I couldn't move my arms. I pulled at my shoulders and realized I was bound tightly to a wooden chair, my arms secured behind me while a rope was wrapped around my lap, keeping me firmly locked to the seat. It creaked in protest as I shifted my weight. Numbness nipped at my arms, and I tried to wriggle them to encourage my blood to circulate.

   A cool breeze brushing against my skin and blew tendrils of hair around my face. It felt like I was outside, but I could also feel walls around me, and the ground was a solid concrete that felt industrial. I tried to focus as I looked around. There were a few yellow light bulbs spaced out evenly around me nailed to thick square concrete posts. Above I could see steel beams supporting the roof. Where the walls should have been were open to the air.

   It was some kind of construction site. To my right, the river far below me twinkled black against the city lights. I must have been near the top of a tall building. To my left was a small parking lot.

   Footsteps echoed against the concrete floor, and swiveled my head quickly in that direction.

    "I was wondering how long it would take you to wake up. It's been a long time since I met someone so young," said a low girlish voice. Her vowels were long and soft, giving her an exotic accent. She pulled a chair behind her and whirled it around in front of me. She sat down, straddling her legs on either side and rested her arms on the chair's back.

   Static electricity climbed over my knees and surrounded my thighs. She was young; she didn't look more than eighteen. She was beautiful, with a wide, full mouth, almond-shaped eyes and black hair flowing down to her waist. Her skin was a light, flawless shimmering bronze. She had a short stature; if I was standing, I don't think she would have reached my chin.

   She sat studying me, assessing what she saw. "Pretty. I bet you get a lot of attention with those bright blue eyes."

   I bristled. Her words didn't feel like compliments. "What do you want?"

   She smiled critically at me. "Very little."

   She rested her chin on her arms. "How old are you?"

    "Twenty-six."

   She rolled her eyes impatiently. "Not your mortal age. When did you change?"

    "Five months ago."

   Her eyes widened in surprise. "That young? And he's already so devoted to you. Unexpected." She reached behind her and pulled out a silver dagger. I didn't take my eyes off it as she flipped it over, the point toward her elbow, and set her arm over it on top of the chair. It was made of a solid piece of silver. The blade was thin and about three inches long. The handle had angled sides and some kind of etching down to the hilt.

    "Who are you?" I was trying to keep my voice from shaking.

   "I'm sorry," she replied. "I should introduce myself. My name is Esther." She pronounced it Ezter, holding on to the vowels and swallowing the last of her name into her throat. "And you are Kaja. Under normal circumstances, I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you. Still, things are never normal for people like us."

   She seemed to be flittering between being indignant and friendly as if she couldn't decide which way to behave.

    "Tell me, do you know who he is?" She had gone back to indignant.

   I stared back at her. Finally, I nodded.

   "How can you stand to have him touch you?" She tilted my chin up with the handle of the dagger. "How can you stand to look at him, or be in the same room with him? You couldn't, not if you truly knew who he is."

   I shook my head away from her. "That's not him, not anymore."

   "Really? For thousands of years, he hunted and tortured and murdered every living person he could find. He destroyed entire villages, butchered families in front of each other, leaving nothing behind. You believe a man like that doesn't enjoy it, that he would suddenly no longer hunger for the thrill, that he could change?"

   "I don't know," I answered glumly. "It was thousands of years ago."

   "You are very young," Her voice was a mixture of pity and sarcasm. "Does time erase brutality and murder? Does time make their deaths irrelevant?"

   Ire rankled up my spine. She was making the same argument I was thinking only hours before. "No, it doesn't," I finally answered.

   She nodded. "It took centuries for me to find him. But I can't kill him. He's too old. So I wait, every few years or so I come to watch him again. You can imagine my surprise to learn he's invested in a child." She leaned toward me and breathed heavily against me. "Nobody ever changes. You would have learned that for yourself if you had the time."

   She looked out over the parking lot, her eyes scanning. She pursed her lips as she turned to look back at me. "I was fifteen years old and had a husband and a son when I died. When my husband realized I wasn't aging, he threw me out and drove me from my village." She told me her story, calmly. "For years, I traveled from village to village. Every time it ended the same, I was exiled or stoned as a witch. Year after year, I wandered alone in the desert, starving every day but unable to die.

    "Eventually I found a small village outside Aroer. For the first time in my life, they accepted me for who I was, for what I was. I delivered babies whose grandchildren I later buried. It was my home. When Ezra came, he knew what I was. I felt the binding. He killed everyone in my home in front of me and then just walked away."

   I didn't need to hear any more, I already knew exactly what it looked like. I wished I had some kind of an answer to give her, or to give myself. But somehow no matter how much she told me about Ezra's past, I couldn't reconcile it to the man I knew.

   My phone rang. Esther smiled and leaned over to pull it from my pocket. I glimpsed the screen as she slid her thumb across it to answer— it was Leif.

    "Hello," she answered sweetly into the phone. I heard Leif's clipped voice through the speaker. He was agitated. "I'm sorry. She's not available." Leif's voice interrupted, growing louder. "Of course, she's fine. We are becoming fast friends."

   There was a long pause on the other end of the phone that was exchanged for a deeper voice.

    "Ezraeil," she murmured with a heavy accent, drawing out every syllable. "It's been a long time." Ezra sounded sharp on the other end. "I'm not surprised you don't remember me. The last time you saw me was in a little village. But then there were a lot of small villages, weren't there?

    "Kaja and I have been talking a lot about you. I can see why you like her. She's everything you are not." She sounded sad and somber. I couldn't hear what Ezra was saying, but I could tell he was trying to keep his voice calm.

    "My needs are simple," she replied. "You took my family, so now I'm going to take yours. It isn't justice, but it will have to do." She pulled my phone away from her ear and disconnected the call. She walked to the edge of the building and turned with her back facing the open air. Behind her was a large orange crane with the letters Shelty written across it and the river in the background. Across the river, I recognized several buildings in the Pearl District. I knew where I was. She held my phone out as far as she could and smiled as she took a photograph of herself with the crane and the rest of the city in the background.

   As she walked toward me again, I watched her tap against the screen and attach the photograph to a text message. She was sending him all the clues he needed to find us.

    "I'm sorry about this." She leaned over me and slid my phone back into my pocket. I was thunderstruck. She was planning to kill me but was trying to make me feel better about it.

    "You want him to watch." My ears were ringing as my heart drummed a demanding message to me from the inside. Panic.

    "Yes," she replied with a nod. "We probably have about fifteen minutes."

    "He's going to kill you."

   She nodded again. "I've accepted the inevitability of my death. I should have died three thousand years ago." Then she walked over to a small bag and pulled out a very thick black marker. She walked to a small section of a concrete interior wall. She lifted her hand, scrawling large letters onto the grey surface.

Mourn, for the Destroyer shall suddenly come on us.

   I gasped.

    "It was you." She turned to look at me. She shrugged uncomprehendingly. "You wrote the message next to Curtis Pope's body."

    "The young man down by the river? Was that his name?" She tossed the marker onto the floor. "That was the day I came back to Portland."

    "You killed him?" The shock had rooted me to the back of the chair.

   Esther glared at me. "I am not a murderer."

   I glared back, "No?"

    "Are you asking if I've killed? Yes, I have. Is it murder when you kill a soldier trying to rape or kill you? Or a Pirate?"

   "I'm not a soldier or a pirate. I'm a girl tied to a chair."

   She sighed. She changed her voice, making it slow and higher in pitch, almost as if she were addressing a child. "It's not murder to kill someone already dead. You died months ago. You told me so yourself."

   "You're rationalizing."

   She turned her head to look out over the parking lot. "Curtis Pope. Who was he, an old lover?"

   "He was a rapist and a serial killer. He was the man who killed me."

   Her head turned slowly to face mine. She narrowed her eyes in disbelief and wonder. "Interesting." I was amazed to read a sense of sympathy and kinship in her expression as if we both shared a devastating secret. She frowned with intensity, "All murderers devise their own punishments and suffer for it eventually."

   I saw a light flash out of the corner of my eye, and I turned my head towards the parking lot. Headlights blazed across the building. I saw a figure open the door and run across the pavement before the car had fully stopped.

    "It's time." She picked up the knife from her chair and walked behind me. I braced myself for the pain I knew would burn quick and deep. She kept her left hand clamped behind my neck, and she bent to cut the tie-wrap bounding my wrists. I sat confused for an instant before I realized what she was doing. She didn't want me tied when she killed me. I supposed that was her twisted idea of being honorable.

  I felt a wave of nausea hit me before I heard water running nearby and smelled something sweet and flowery. Esther stood a few feet away, wearing a flowing high-waist dress embroidered with a green leaf design down to her feet. Sheer gossamer sleeves flowed down to her wrists. She had her dark hair pinned up with soft curls fluttering in the breeze around her face. A lace veil was pinned to the top of her head and draped past her shoulders. In her left hand, she held the reins of a horse that was casually eating the grass at his feet. A man, older than Esther, was standing in front of her. He wore a high-waist coat with tales trailing down his thighs and tall black boots up to his knees. The scene looked like a page out of an Austen novel.

   The air was chilled, even though it clearly looked to be spring. In the distance, I saw men bent over, plowing a field with long wooden spades.

    "Please, Petro. Come with me. I know we can if we go now." Esther was pleading in an almost child-like way.

   The man slapped his hand hard against his thigh as he looked at her. "You find him and then what? How much more of your life, of my life, are you going to devote to this?" Esther didn't reply but looked up at him with a confused and shaken expression. The man shook his head sternly. "No. I've had enough. You'll never be satisfied until you bring them back from the dead."

   He stepped back from her, grabbing the reins of the horse, and stalked away, leaving her alone. Esther watched him go, stricken.

Her hand brushed along the side of my neck as she stepped in front of me, breaking the vision.

    "You're young. It will be quick, I promise," she whispered, making her voice sound smooth and reassuring. She curled her fingers firmly around my throat as she bent to cut the ropes around my lap. 

    "You'll never be satisfied until you bring them back from the dead," I echoed my vision. Esther froze in mid-motion, the dagger inches from the ropes. Her grip on my throat lessened slightly for an instant. An instant was all I needed.

   I thrust my body backwards; tilting the chair onto its back legs away from her and lifted my feet. I aimed a kick at her head but missed and connected with her shoulders instead. Pain sliced through my injured ankle. Unprepared, her body flew back and landed sprawled on the floor. The force of the kick thrust me back awkwardly. I heard a cracking sound as the back of my head slammed into the concrete. A loud hum plugged my ears and slivers of pain radiated across my skull. I was dazed for an instant before instinct took over.

   The back of the chair broke apart. I reached down and shimmied the rope down from my lap past my knees. I rolled over, scanning the parking lot for Ezra. It was empty. Then I cringed at the next sound.

   Esther was laughing. "You can't win." She cackled again. "Why are you fighting?"

   Did she honestly expect me to just hold still? Something glittered on the floor. I turned to see the dagger lying a couple feet away from me. I rolled onto my stomach and scrambled quickly to grab it. Esther casually sat up and scooped up the knife in front of me. Then she reached down and clutched the back of my neck. She flipped me over with ease and squatted to straddle me, pinning my legs to the floor as she pressed the palm of her right hand firmly against my sternum and raised the dagger with her left. I watched the tip of the blade wink brightly at me as it shifted.

   Electric fingers tapped lightly across my abdomen and slid over my breasts to my neck.

    "Petro knew your obsession would never be satisfied. That's why he left you." I spat at her, glaring up into her eyes. If I was going to die, she was going to know that even those few minutes before death wouldn't bring her any kind of peace.

   She sat up just a fraction, a stream of emotions projected across her face; confusion, anger, resentment, sorrow and fear rolled past in rapid succession. Then confusion returned.

   I reached up with my left hand for the dagger. My hand skated over her fingers and gripped the blade, its edge cutting into my skin. I tilted the point away from me and thrust it back into the side of her neck.

   She reared in surprise as I felt the dagger sink into her flesh. Esther's back arched as my hand seized itself around the dagger like a vice. Fire burned through my bones, and agony raked along my arm, tearing at the flesh cell by cell. I had no control. My arm locked in place as my shoulder was thrust back into the floor. Pain was no longer an idea or sensation but a physical being. It had been transformed into a living stream of energy that flowed from Esther into my arm, passing slowly into the floor underneath me.

   Esther clawed weakly at the dagger, trying vainly to pull it from her neck. A short vision of her running flashed for an instant before me. I could hear her piercing screams echo around us but her jaw was clenched tight. The muscles of her neck shuddered. I realized the screams were coming from me. My muscles pulled away from the bone, tendon by tendon as my legs and free arm shook against the floor. Slowly, agonizingly, the current ebbed as the pain lessened. I felt the last remnants of energy pulled from my arm into the concrete below.

   I was gasping. My lungs demanded air, but I couldn't breathe. Esther's body was sprawled across mine. I sluggishly uncurled my hand from the dagger, finger by finger, begging my muscles and bones to move. Still gasping I pushed against Esther's body and squirmed under her. I managed to get one leg released and kicked weakly against her to free the other. I rolled over onto my knees and tried to stand. My stomach spun uneasily.

   Ezra and Leif were standing by the stairs watching, astounded and physically shaken. Ezra was watching me and Leif was staring at Esther. I staggered past them and clutched at swaying walls as I made my way down the stairs. My lungs gulped air greedily with each desperate gasp. I made my way out of the back of the building and weaved across the grass toward a thick metal railing overlooking the river.

   Sobs of fear, tension, agony, and release shook me. I didn't try to stop myself.

   I heard steps slowly approaching from behind. Ezra stepped closer and stood a few inches behind me. He waited quietly and then curved his body around mine, placing each hand on the railing on either side of me. I spun around to face him and pummeled my fist in rage as hard as I could against his chest. Ezra didn't move. I slapped him across the face with every bit of strength I had and slammed my other fist against him equally as hard. A quivering sob escaped from my lips as I pounded my fury against him again and again. He let his hands hang limply at his sides, not offering any defense. I sobbed, wracked with pain and rage, and pounded all the remaining strength I had against him.

    "You," I moaned. "You killed them. You murdered all of them." I hit him again, and again, each jab growing weaker as my strength and vehemence drained gradually away. Ezra slowly lifted his hand and circled his arm around my waist, pulling me gently toward him. I tried to hit him a couple more times as he wrapped his arms around my back. My arms folded between us and I moaned weakly and crumpled against his chest. He was quiet as he allowed me to cry faintly. 

   The shaking eventually subsided, as my cries grew quiet. I heard footsteps growing closer. "Take her home," Leif said quietly. "I'll take care of this." Ezra bent down and swept up my legs then carried me to his car.

This may be the end of Esther, but it's just the beginning...

TEASER: I felt weak. "When did it start?"