"I need to rest for a second." I lowered my head onto the table and left it there. The smooth wood felt cool against my skin.
Leif sighed, "Drink some more beer."
"Would you lay off the beer! What are you, some kind of a pusher?" Blood was rushing to my head again, and I was reeling in agitation.
He stared back at me, unfazed. "Your adrenaline is pumping. It will help calm you."
"My adrenaline is pumping?" People in the bar glanced nervously at me. "No kidding. Any other wise observations you'd like to impart?" Ezra tapped his foot and raised his eyebrows. A smirk started to form; he was clearly enjoying himself.
"Oh, I'm full of wise observations I pass out only if you're very, very good." Then he reached across the table and clinked his bottle against mine. "Cheers."
I growled to myself and sank back in my chair. Who the hell are these men and, more importantly, why am I still sitting here?
Ezra chuckled as he settled back. I could feel his eyes drifting along my face. The erratic behavior of my pulse over the last hour was making it very difficult to focus. I took another drink as I collected my thoughts. "If immortal people, Avati, have been living on earth all this time, why doesn't anyone know about them? Someone at some point must have noticed."
Ezra nodded, "You have noticed. You've known about us all along. There are legends about us everywhere. We've had many names over the years. Each civilization, each millennium, has called us something new." He paused as he drank the last mouthful from his bottle. "Gods... Angels... Demons."
Slowly I turned. "I'm sorry, did you just call me a god?"
"Yes," Leif replied at the same time, Ezra answered, "No."
"In a manner of speaking," Leif continued.
"No," Ezra restated, rolling his eyes at Leif. "People just thought we were. We were powerful, immortal beings, stronger and faster than humans, we stayed young, and we never died. Gods and angels were everywhere, part of daily life. What else could we be?"
Leif nodded his head and rested his elbows on the table. "Civilizations die, and empires fall. With that, our names change. Today we are witches, vampires, and zombies."
"Zombies? Don't tell me I'm going to get a hankering for cranium soufflé." I shook my head. This was long past insane.
"No, that's just the most recent incarnation." Ezra smiled. He looked like he was really starting to enjoy himself. "Originally zombies were people who had risen from the grave, powerful and unable to die. Nzambi means 'god.' It's all the same thing. Us."
"I need a moment." I stood up from the table and made my way back to the bathroom.
Immortals. Gods and angels living as ordinary people. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight. I could still get sick or hurt but not die. The idea sounded good, but I didn't think I liked the reality of it. The truth of it? Nothing was resembling that in any of this.
I walked into a bathroom stall and sank to the floor, resting my head on my knees. Maybe they were crazy, and somehow someone had slipped me some weird hallucinogens. That was the only thing that made sense.
If someone had asked me if I would choose to be immortal, if I could, I honestly don't know how I would answer. Of course, the theory sounds appealing, but then it often does. The practicality of such a thing is too big to put into a simple yes or no answer. Both are too small for the enormity of it all. But immortality doesn't ask permission.
I wrapped my arms around my knees. I shuddered as I remembered a steel-like arm pressing against me, digging into my throat as something cold and hard jabbed into my back. His legs pushing between mine, his erection plowing hard against my thigh, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could feel the air choking away from me and started shaking deep inside. Who was he? Why?
I don't know how long I sat on the bathroom floor. It must have been a while because my legs were beginning to feel stiff, and I was getting cold. I groaned as I extended my legs. The movement made the gash in my side smart with pain for an instant. I pulled myself up and stood with my hands resting against the stall walls, steeling myself before heading back out.
As I walked back to the table, Leif grinned up at me, "Ah, Her Loveliness returns." Ezra frowned down at the table.
I huffed, annoyed. I didn't quite feel like responding to his remark. I looked at the chair. I didn't want to sit either. All I wanted was to crawl into bed.
"You're exhausted," Ezra said as if he was reading my mind. "Maybe you should go home, sleep for a while."
"God, yes," I replied weakly and sighed.
Leif nodded. "Give me your phone." I blinked at him then pulled out my phone from my pocket. He took it and punched in a number. "Call if you need anything. You're young, and chances are... you will."
"Where's your car?" Ezra asked as he bent to pick up my bag from beneath the table.
"I didn't drive. I took the streetcar." They glanced at each other. "It's fine, it's still running."
Ezra shook his head. "I'll drive you." Leif shot him a quick look but said nothing. "If I don't, you might drop from exhaustion before you get home."
It had been an unusually warm day for early March, but dark clouds began threatening in the sky. It was going to rain soon. I had planned on being home much earlier and foolishly didn't bring my jacket with me. The idea of riding home in a warm car rather than standing on a cold platform was appealing. A warning about getting in a car with a strange man tingled in the back of my mind. I was making all sorts of unsound decisions that would likely lead to my body washing up in a canal somewhere tomorrow.
I nodded in acquiescence, grabbing my keys with the pepper spray keychain and tucking them into my pocket. "Thank you." He hoisted my bag onto his shoulder before walking me outside. Leif sat back in his seat and watched us leave.
Once outside, Ezra led me around the corner to a black Land Rover. After opening the door for me, he tossed my bag onto the back seat. I held my fingers up to the heater as he started the car. The warm air felt delicious against my icy skin.
"Where to?" he asked as he pulled out into the street.
"Northwest. Near Wallace Park." I'd been living in Portland for less than a year and was still getting to know the neighborhoods. I'd moved there nine months before when a friend offered to let me sublet her place for a month. After the month was over, I'd decided to stay.
As my hands slowly warmed, the skin along my arms tingled slightly. Invisible needles traveled up to my shoulders and onto my torso as the hairs along my skin stood up. I could smell the faint odor of ozone in the air. Something about it felt familiar, almost pleasant. I looked over at Ezra. He didn't seem to notice the smell. My eyes caught a sign for a creamery, and I tracked it with my eyes until it disappeared in the distance. Ice cream sounded good. Suddenly I felt embarrassed. My mind was racing from one bizarre topic to the next.
"Where are you from?" I asked him, suddenly realizing in the last couple hours, I'd learned almost nothing about either of them.
"What?" he asked, glancing at me, his expression inscrutable.
"Where are you from?" I repeated.
"The Middle East, Asia, Europe for a while, and now North America. I haven't been here very long." I vaguely wondered what very long meant to a man like him.
"You're from all those places?" How could anyone be from everywhere?
"Yes."
"Are you cryptic on purpose, or is it just a habit?" I don't know why this was so irritating. It was none of my business where he was from.
He chuckled lightly, "Habit, I guess." I watched his face for a couple seconds. Again, I couldn't read anything. "Is Leif from three different continents as well?"
"No, he hasn't had enough time yet... just two continents. Iceland, originally, but he spent a lot of time in France." He seemed to smile and then frowned. "That's where I met him a few years ago. He was young and wild."
I tried to imagine Leif, young and wild. He hadn't changed much. "What does 'a few years ago' mean?"
He pursed his lips as he thought. He seemed to be weighing options before he answered. "I can't tell you exactly. I met him a while after he had already changed. But he was named after the explorer."
"Which one?"
"Leif the Lucky," he said, never taking his eyes off the road. "He beat Columbus by a few centuries."
Leif the Lucky. My mind started rolling through the various kings and queens. It took me a second to make the connection. "Leif Erikson?" He nodded. I quickly ran the math. "That would mean Leif is, what... a thousand years old?" Ezra didn't answer.
Holy Shit! I thought about how casually he sliced through his arm, the edges just starting to knit closed.
It will take most of the night to come together. By this time tomorrow, you'll barely be able to see there was a cut at all.
I started racing through the possibilities as we slid to a stop at a light. Ezra watched me as the realization set in. He had healed in seconds.
"How old are you?" I whispered.
"Old."
I'd heard that before. "How old?" I repeated.
The light changed, and he stepped on the gas. He held his breath for a moment before exhaling. "I don't know. I don't remember much from my early life. The world changes so slowly. But, I was already very old when the Egyptians were still a bunch of villagers huddled in the mud by a river."
I sat still for a moment. I tried to do the math and gave up at the incomprehensibility of it all. This man, who looked to be in his early thirties, was thousands of years old. How many thousands? Five thousand? Seven? Ten? More? I could scarcely imagine.
"What do you remember?" I asked when I finally gave up trying to work out the math. "Myself mostly," he answered. "I was a shepherd, a soldier, a sailor... a slave."
"A slave?"
What must have slavery been like so many thousands of years ago? A chill whispered to me, worse. But worse than what? Worse than slavery today? Worse than slavery two hundred years ago? Is there such a thing as worse slavery to the enslaved?
He nodded calmly, "Many, many times."
A dull sense of anxiety flooded through me. We drove silently for some time. As we neared my neighborhood, I directed him toward Pettygrove Street.
He pulled up in front of my building. "When you told me different civilizations thought of the Avati as gods and angels, I guess I didn't really understand. You were talking about yourself, weren't you?"
"Yes," he whispered.
I took a few seconds to take it all in. Blood rushed to my head as my heart throbbed again and again. A small smile pulled at the corners of his lips. I realized I was staring at his mouth.
I shook my head, and my heart slowed. This kept happening.
"It's the adrenaline," he said, reading my mind once more.
"What?"
"It's one of the minor differences I mentioned," he explained. "Your body is producing massive amounts of adrenaline right now. You'll be very anxious at times. Nervous. Aggravated. Easily excited and impulsive. Your senses are more heightened, and most of all, you'll want to touch and taste everything. Especially now that you're so new and your body is still adjusting." He paused as if to make a point. "It keeps you paranoid, which keeps you safe while you're young and weak."
I laughed inwardly. Erratic and paranoid, two words I think had seldom been used to describe me... it made for an unknown future. "It's funny," I chuckled before I leaned over and pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes. They were beginning to ache. "Gods and zombies," I muttered to myself.
I sat up and turned to reach for the door handle. "Thank you," I said quietly as I moved to get out of the car.
"I was wondering," he asked, touching my wrist lightly. It was like a jolt. I wanted to feel his hand run up my arm, all along my skin. "Are you a student?" I looked at him perplexed for a moment then realized he was still asking me a question. "The bag," he said, nodding his head toward the back seat.
"I was. I graduated a few years ago."
"Did you study ancient languages?"
I shook my head. "No, Hungarian. I'm a translator. Why?"
He shrugged. "Just curious."
"Randomly odd guess." I replied and opened the door. "Thanks again."
He lifted my bag and passed it over to me as I stepped out. Rushing to the main door of the building, I twisted the key in the lock and thundered up each flight of stairs. I wanted to get into my apartment and turn the heat on, right away. As I stepped through the front door, a blast of warm air met me. I had forgotten to turn the heat off before I left. A groan exploded out of me as I switched on the light, grateful at my morning lapse.
I walked over to the bay window that looked out over the street. The Land Rover was still there, a dark outline silhouetted against the black road. The interior of the car was dark. I could just make out a slight outline of his hands resting on the steering wheel. I watched him for a while, then reached out and placed the palm of my hand on the windowpane. A soft rain started splattered against it. I left it there for a few moments longer, enjoying the cold only a few minutes before I was rushing to escape.
I lowered my hand and moved away from the window. I was exhausted, but even then, I didn't know if I'd be able to sleep.
Updates will be on Mondays and maybe sometimes on Thursdays for super long chapters if I can cut them into two.
TEASER: He'd allowed the man the opportunity to save himself. He never used to offer chances.
Wonder what that's about.