The Binding

Chapter Twenty-One

"I'm using you."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am. I'm using you."

"I don't care." Ezra directed a small flashlight in front of us along the path. I'd already stumbled twice.

"How can you not care? My body is feeding off yours like a tick."

"When a mother feeds her infant, does she think of it as a tick?"

I stopped cold. He stopped when he realized I wasn't walking next to him any longer and looked back.

"First, you are not my mother, and second, I'm not a child." He didn't respond but looked away. "I'm not that kind of child. And really, that term is starting to get old."

"You're not a child, and I'm not your mother, or father rather. But a parent loves their child more than anything. Nothing else matters. A mother would throw herself in front of a train, do anything, to protect her child." He stepped closer and looked down at me. The mother analogy was a little creepy.

"Do you? Do you really or is it just the tether? We don't know."

"I know."

"You should leave me," I said as I disappeared into the darkness. Ezra grabbed my wrist and pulled me to a stop.

I heard a voice crawl out of Ezra's throat that I had never imagined. There was so much intensity, ferocity, and hurt. "I will not leave you," he said, stressing each word more than the last. "Don't ever ask me to again."

"How can you ever be sure?"

He pulled me closer. "Gregor doesn't know everything. He doesn't know. He doesn't know you chose me. Maybe I chose you."

I nodded slowly. He dropped his hands to his sides.

Maybe he was right. Maybe Gregor was right. How could we ever know? I quietly walked next to Ezra the rest of the way to the car.

The sun had already risen, and people had begun their morning activities by the time we arrived in Kaş. I peeled off my clothes and climbed into bed. Curling onto my side, I felt Ezra pull back the covers to slide in next to me.

He pulled me closer to him and wrapped himself behind me, his warm breath tickling the tiny hairs along my neck. As I waited for sleep to find me, I watched the light slowly creep across the room.

This story was spinning in ways I had never predicted. Whether it was for better or worse... I was too terrified to guess.

Days passed without any new revelations or incidents. Ezra followed Esther's research, digging through files on her computer and hard drives. I stared at the map and read the genetic reports we found in her mail over and over again. What was I looking for? What was Esther looking for? Most importantly, why? While I found genetic profiling and the map of people fascinating, I couldn't find a discernible reason for it.

She didn't seem to be searching for the obvious... the quest to find the Avati gene—that immortality gene that makes us who we are. I couldn't tell if she had already found the gene and had moved on to a different search or if she simply didn't care to discover it. All the research seemed to focus on where people were born and when... it was all about the clusters.

"It's almost like she's searching for someone," I said to no one in particular.

"Who?" Ezra asked. He was bent over the coffee table again with a dozen scrolls piled in front of him. One was rolled out, and he was making light marks on it with a pencil.