The knife sunk into his side up to the hilt. Petro convulsed once, his back arched, and then there was nothing but pain. Ezra had disappeared. Petro had disappeared. Nothing existed. The universe was trying to rip my cells apart. I can't say if there was no sound, a kind of vacuum, or the air around me roared so loud I couldn't comprehend it. It was both. So much pain is impossible to explain— as impossible as trying to describe the explosive pleasure of sugar to someone who has never tried it. It was more than pain. It was the beginning and end of everything.

I don't know if I was conscious when I collapsed onto Petro's body.

The first thing I remember seeing was Petro's mouth. I tried to sit up. His body felt warm and flaccid under me.

I think I heard a voice screaming for Leif. Was it Sria? Someone lifted me up.

"We have to get her out of here. If she stays, she'll take all the energy he has left."

Walls moved past me in a blur.

"You will never do that to me again!" Sria said, seething into my ear. I glanced up at her. Blood had smeared over half her face from the gash I gave her.

Near the main stairwell, I saw Yisu propped up against the railing breathing heavily. She raised a drooping eyelid up at us as we approached. Tem was pinned to the wall next to her. A long thin blade was thrust through his shoulder, and the other dug deep into his hip. He wasn't fighting. He was aloof and stoic. He just watched us cross the room and then closed his eyes quietly. I saw bodies, probably guards, sprawled on the ground. I didn't care enough to look closely at them or count. They never stood a chance. I closed my eyes, wishing for darkness.

Sria was driving. I was curled up in the back seat, drifting in and out of consciousness. We hadn't spoken, exchanging only a few words when needed. I struggled to reconcile myself with the reality of what I did.

When rage, violence, and murder rip away our security, we clutch onto motives. We grasp for them desperately. Motivation gives us a sense of control, the means to drag our souls back to the rational world, to normalcy. Without motivation, without answers to that inevitable question of why, we are helpless and vulnerable. So we can not, will not allow the world to exist without it.

Petro chewed up people without thought or malice. He sent those mortals after us in Kaş for the same reason Ezra murdered thousands. Because he could. Ezra told me that. I just refused to believe it.

I had a motive. I knew why I killed. Does that make me better? Does that make a difference in the end?

Sria was lost in her own thoughts while Yisu stared out the window in the seat next to her.

"Were you trying to stop me?" I finally said, breaking the silence. For a long time, Sria didn't move. She stared intently at the road.

"I had to keep you from getting involved."

"Which one were you trying to protect?"

She sighed. "I'm not sure."

"You knew him." It wasn't exactly a question, but I was still waiting for confirmation.

"I knew him very well," she finally answered.

"You were lovers?"

She nodded slowly, "For generations," she said barely above a whisper. She breathed a deep, slow sobering breath. "His original name was Poas. He was born on the northern coast of the Black Sea, somewhere near the Crimean Peninsula."

"You loved him?"

She nodded once.

"He was an evil megalomaniac murderer," I said slowly to myself. It helped to say it, to remind myself.

She laughed. "Yes. You do seem to attract them, don't you?"

I gasped. She had a point.

Yisu made a loud sniffing noise from her seat and turned to frown at me. "You're not a mortal anymore. It won't do you any good to continue thinking like one." I blinked back at her baffled.

"Time doesn't deal in absolutes, Kaja," Sria said. "He wasn't a good man, and he wasn't a bad man. He was Avati. Good people will sometimes do vile, selfish, and despicable things. Bad people will sometimes be charitable and kind. That is the way of things."

"What do you mean by time?"

"Time is what we are. It's all we have," Yisu replied.

Sria continued, "An eternity to commit an infinite amount of actions in an infinite number of ways. Gods aren't good or evil. They just are."

I thought about that. But it didn't feel right. I shook my head, "Avati don't have eternity. We just imagine we do." Sria said nothing, just watched the road in front of her. I closed my eyes. I suppose it boils down to perspective. Maybe watching hundreds, then thousands of generations live and die is eternity.

"Why did you separate?"

She swallowed, her face strained. "Over the years, I watched him grow dark and angry. It took centuries to finally leave him. I was tethered to him, so separating was nearly impossible. I eventually left and traveled west."

"Tethered?" I asked, startled. "He was Taman?"

She smiled, slightly sad. "No, he wasn't Taman."

"I don't understand."

"Everyone tethers, Kaja. A mother tethers to her child. Husbands and wives... even friends," she answered. "Ezra is tethered to Leif as much as he is tethered to you." She stopped and then snickered half under her breath. "Well, maybe not as much. The way a Taman tethers, like everything else they do, is extreme."

Yisu giggled in agreement.

I stared at the back of her seat for a moment. "He wasn't the source Hattu was referring to."

"No, I don't think so."

"Then who is it?"

"I think we all know who the source is, Kaja," Yisu answered.

Sria continued as if she had never stopped. "The last time I saw Poas was in Kush."

"Kush?"

"It was an empire south of Egypt. It was also called Nubia by some people."

"Nubians." I was familiar with the name. "The Sudan. Didn't they conquer Egypt?"

"Sure... one of many," Yisu answered. Her feet were dangling off the edge of the seat and dancing excitedly... or maybe it was boredom.

"Just about everyone in the region attacked Egypt at some point. Many of them succeeded. Hyksos, Kushites, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans... they all claimed Egypt for themselves. But who calls themselves the King is unimportant."

I agreed with Sria on that point. In the end, it never seems to matter who was wearing the crown. People still gathered food, built homes, married, had children, and died. The rest is just fluff.

"I loved a Kushite man there. He was a priest," she said. "Poas destroyed him."

"What happened?"

She held out her hand toward me, palm up, in an inviting gesture. It took another moment for me to understand. She wanted to show me. I reached forward and gently placed my hand over hers. I knew. I simply knew I'd be able to see exactly what she wanted to show me.

I felt intense heat burn against my skin before I opened my eyes. There was stone all around me. Monolithic pillars of stone towered above where I stood. It was a giant building, and every foot of it was intricately carved. The walls and pillars were brightly colored like a kaleidoscope of reds, blues, yellows, and greens. The colors were a sharp contrast to the panoramic desert brown all around the building. The structure was astounding— and it was burning. A roof fitted with wooden beams was on fire, and I could see flames licking upwards from isolated places inside the building. And two colossal wooden doors at the entrance were engulfed in red and amber flames.

Gathered all around the steps were people. Some were crying. The rest stared in dumb horror as the fire burned and ate away anything that wasn't stone, leaving black trails of smoke and soot along the walls. Sria was standing a few feet away, her eyes riveted on a man prostrate in front of the steps. I noticed near him lay what looked like statues that had been broken and crumbled into hundreds of pieces.

Standing on the remains of a large statue to the right was Petro. He surveyed the blazing fire and the prostrate man with disinterest. He turned to Sria and watched her with no more interest than he had with the fire. Finally, Petro turned and walked away into the desert.

I pulled my hand away and opened my eyes slowly. "The people there named him Petbe. That was the last time I saw him until today," she said placidly. "I moved north to Egypt and took a boat to Parthia and then traveled east to China. I found Yisu not long after that."

"What happened to the man? The priest?"

"He committed suicide," she answered. "The temple was destroyed. He had offended the gods, and they turned their backs on him. It was required." A binding rolled over me that sent sharp electric tendrils along my arms and back.

"He destroyed the temple because of you?" I asked, not exactly surprised but nonetheless horrified. More than stone and mortar, I didn't need the vision to know how important a temple would have been to them.

She nodded. "Petbe is the god of revenge." She smirked sarcastically. "He must have kept the name."

Sria and Yisu eventually took me to a small house in San Francisco. They did their best to try to keep me occupied, but the endless traffic and noisy crowds became quickly tiresome. I longed for our quiet Mediterranean shore and searched endlessly for pure isolation... the one thing I think they wanted me most to avoid.

Sria was withdrawn most days. I think she was mourning Petro, in her own way. Maybe she was just as confused as I was. My feelings for Ezra were mixed up in my feelings for Petro. Evil megalomaniac murders. Maybe that's the cost of old age. There's always a price.

What I had was what all Avati have... time. Time to try to find answers to unanswerable questions. If evil doesn't exist but instead occurs only in degrees of selfishness and malicious behavior, then is that also true for good? I had always thought of myself as good. If that is true, then did that make Ezra evil or degrees of evil? No matter how much I saw or learned of Azrael, I couldn't think of Ezra as evil. So what of Petro? Was he any different? Of course not. Ezra would be the first to admit he had done far, far worse. If Ezra had met me in a tiny village thousands of years ago, would he have slaughtered me as he had everyone else?

Only one answer is possible.

Yes.

And still, I couldn't understand Petro. The way he loathed mortals and the world. I tried to see the world from his point of view, imagine how it was when he was young. But I couldn't see mortals as cannibals incapable of respect and love.

I thought about the way Petro looked at me, how he touched me. I thought about those tender moments just before he died. He had such longing. He called me a warrior with such reverence. He didn't just want to protect me. He wanted to fight beside me. There were moments, so many moments when I was filled with regret. This regret ran much deeper than what I felt toward Esther. But I chose Ezra. I needed Ezra like I needed air to breathe.

Leif called a week after I arrived in San Francisco. Ezra was recovering— without me. It had to be without me. If the connection had lasted a few more seconds, Petro would have killed him. Leif couldn't tell us how long it would take, and he wouldn't say where he was. Couldn't and wouldn't... both were so agonizingly frustrating.

I spent weeks that turned into months weak and sluggish and miserable. Yisu said it was because I was so far away from Ezra. I knew better. Yes, tethering bound me to Ezra on a basic biological level— I understood that.

I understood many things.

That Sumerian text referred to the Taman as the gods of gods. And the gods of gods feed. I was feeding off my friends. I understood that too. But I knew better than to believe that was why I was weak and sluggish, more miserable than anything else. I needed Ezra for more than just energy. I understood that the most.

Six months, one week and four days of silence, and then Leif called. They were back in Portland. Leif had objected to returning so soon with numerous colorful Icelandic expletives, but Ezra, he explained, had insisted. I was on the road one hundred and twenty-six minutes later.

It was early March, and I wound my way along the road that ran deep into the forest toward Ezra's home. My home. I realized I had come full circle. I was back in Portland a year, almost to the day since my life twisted in the most unimaginable direction. My life had a will of its own. So I didn't worry any longer about feeling out of control or lost, the way I sometimes did when I first crossed over. I didn't know if life was ruled by destiny, fate, or a series of meaningless random actions. And I just didn't care. Life was too long and too short to worry about.

I pulled up to the house and parked the car then studied the thick alabaster walls. The air and trees vibrated excitedly around me. Minutes ticked by steadily as I sat outside, staring at the house.

Nervousness fluttered delicate wings inside me.

Finally, I opened the car door and slipped my key into the front lock. The door groaned, and the house echoed an earnest greeting. It had been empty for too long and I imagined its relief at being filled again. Ezra was nearby. I could feel his white glow. I stretched out my senses for Leif. I felt nothing. Did that mean he wasn't there or that my body wasn't craving other energies? One day I will be able to figure all this out.

A quick search of the house told me Leif was not there. I found Ezra curled on the bed, breathing slowly. I watched his chest rise and fall with a deep rhythm. I understood what Gregor meant when he said I fed off the energy of the people and the world around me. But, suddenly, it didn't feel like feeding to me. It felt more like radiating in the warmth from a fire. Without a sound, I pulled aside the blanket and crawled into the bed. The effect was instantaneous. The pain and tension I didn't know I had been carrying dissolved. Suddenly I felt like I could breathe for the first time.

Ezra reached over and pulled my body close to his. He never woke, but began to breathe deeper, falling further into sleep.

A knock at the front door pulled me out of a dreamless sleep five minutes or maybe five hours later. I untangled myself from Ezra and left the room to answer it.

Martin Aguirre stood at the threshold and smiled, warm and masculine. I blinked in shock. His timing was extraordinary.

"Detective."

"Ms. Landauer," he answered, nodded. "Or is it Mrs. Sarian now?"

"Both, I suppose," I murmured, still flummoxed. "Ah... please.... Come in."

Nodding, he walked toward me and looked around the room. The consummate detective, I thought, always collecting information. His scent floated past me, powerful and invigorating. It was almost intoxicating. He still smelled like sweet lemongrass and honey. Something about it reminded me of warm, happy childhood memories, of shrieks of childish laughter, of picnics and running through the sprinklers.

"You're lucky you found me here. I just returned."

"Not so lucky. I've been stopping by periodically hoping to find you home. Long Honeymoon?"

I half sighed to myself. "In a manner of speaking."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing," I answered. "Is there something you need?"

He nodded again. "I need to show you something," he said as he reached into his bag and pulled out an iPad. I took it and settled into a chair at the dining room table. Martin sat down across from me. I swiped the screen open, and he reached over to tap the video icon.

Wide-angled surveillance footage of a parking lot filled the screen. I watched confused. Several seconds passed before a car drove into view. A woman stepped out and walked to the trunk. I watched as she spent several more seconds bent over something and then threw a large object over her shoulder. My heart faltered.

She carried me into the building and out of the camera's view. Ezra's car had nearly toppled over when he jumped out of it. Then he destroyed a steel door when he ripped it from its frame. I hadn't known he did that. I think I even gasped when all the electric lights glowed with bright luminescent orbs, blocking out the building behind them. The camera never captured me running from the building. For some extraordinary reason, I chose to run out the back of the building toward the river.

The camera never showed my face. It never showed anyone's face. But I knew that wouldn't matter. Some expert somewhere would be able to clean the footage up and find something... if not our faces, then a license plate. I watched the video through to the end, then tapped the screen gently to close it and looked up— into the barrel of a gun.

Martin's elbow rested calmly on the surface of the table, and his gun was pointed directly at me. He showed no nervousness or agitation. His expression was casual but unmistakably serious. I blinked back at him.

"I spent half of my childhood in foster homes," he told me. "My parents died when I was very young. Their car was buried in a mudslide. I was in the backseat. I nearly suffocated myself, but I was lucky."

I nodded once, a gesture so small it would have been imperceptible if he hadn't been watching me so intently.

"My mother adopted me when I was barely over a year old. Her name was Maria. She was everything to me, as mothers are to children at that age," he said calmly. I watched the barrel of the gun and marveled at the incredible path my life had taken. In one year, I had been stabbed, shot, kidnapped, practically forced into prostitution, and now about to be shot again. And I'd seen a lot of people die. This was not fair.

And worst of all Ezra was going to kill him, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Despite everything, I really liked Detective Aguirre.

"I was ten years old when our house caught fire."

"How?"

His lips pursed in either surprise or amusement. Probably both. "A defective toaster oven." He paused only a moment before he continued the story.

But I interrupted him before he could. "I have to admit the story is intriguing, but I'd be able to pay much better attention without the gun."

He smiled at me, that same smile I saw when I first visited him in the police station, but he didn't lower the gun. He didn't move even a fraction of an inch.

"My mother managed to swing me out a second-floor window before the ceiling collapsed on her," he continued. "I remember hanging on to the window frame and long as I could. Eventually, the heat burned my hands so much I had to let go. I broke both ankles."

"Did she survive?"

He shook his head. "It took the fire department more than an hour to get the fire under control enough to get in. Her entire body was burned by then."

I nodded in sympathy.

"Her body disappeared from the morgue the next day," he added. "They blamed a funeral home mix up," he scowled and then slid into a deep frown. "Sometimes I..." his voice trailed into the air.

"I'm sorry," I said and tried to swallow. My mouth was dry and cracked.

His fingers slowly gripped around the gun tighter, more securely. I could see it. In seconds he was going to shoot.

"If I pulled this trigger, would you die?"

I watched his fingers tightened ever so slightly. The muscles in his forearm were lean and tight. A large vein bulged out under his skin, leading up to his elbow. Then my eyes traveled slowly, carefully up to his face, and found his eyes. They were deep chocolate but reflected the amber light in the room.

"No."

He didn't move, but I sensed a shudder pass through him.

"How do you know?" I asked, surprised by how soft and breathy my voice sounded.

"Because he's Avati," Ezra's voice said quietly from across the room. "Or will be." We both turned to look at him at the same time. Ezra was pale and grey. He slumped over slightly and leaned on a cane that looked like it was from the eighteenth century. Even at half his strength, his muscles were pulled tight and ready to fight, but he didn't move.

I blinked slowly as my shoulders relaxed. I felt a slight tug at my navel. Suddenly it all made sense. It was obvious. I turned back to Martin, and my eyes brighten. Why hadn't I realized it before?

"Oh... that's why you smell so good!"

He looked bewildered.

I smiled. "Welcome."

Aaaaand we're done here.

Hope you've enjoyed it, thank you for reading!