Kirev's Door (3 page)

His living light, or aleimi, abruptly dimmed.

It was like a fog had come over his mind, making the room difficult to see.

Kirev fought the brief panic that fell over him every time he lost access to the greater part of his sight, what the humans called his “psychic” vision.

The light of Dan, his own light, the light of the Barrier itself…it all faded from his awareness in a handful of seconds, making that part of him grope in the dark, figuratively at least. Its absence left the world flat, two-dimensional.

He adjusted, of course, within seconds. He’d worn collars since he’d been first captured and enslaved as a child, so it wasn’t as if he hadn’t learned to cope. But that initial panic never seemed to go away entirely…or to lessen in intensity when it first hit.

Thanks to the combination lock, only “Dan” or someone with whom he’d shared the code would be able to take that collar off Kirev now.

Well, that or a good set of bolt-cutters.

Kirev pushed the thought from his mind, meeting the human’s gaze when he straightened his legs, gliding gracefully back up to his full height.

He ignored the appraising look the human gave him that time, too.

“You look…sharp.” Dan smiled, winking at him. “Positively swank.”

He reached up, tugging on Kirev’s suit jacket near the open neck of his collar. The human’s fingers pulled and smoothed to straighten the material to accommodate the collar he wore. Even blind, however, Kirev knew it was just an excuse to touch him.

He gave the human a polite smile in return. “Thank you, sir.”

“Dan,” the other said, smiling wider. “Call me Dan, Kirev.”

“Of course,” Kirev said, bowing slightly. “Thank you, Dan.”

When the other turned, heading for the door, the practiced smile slid off Kirev’s face.

They needed their little charades.

All beings needed them, he supposed…but he noticed the trait particularly on humans. Then again, one needed to tell oneself something when enslaving an entire species and trying to pretend it was by mutual agreement.

“Step it up, Kirev,” Dan called over his shoulder. “With all of your primping, we’ll be late.”

Kirev didn’t answer.

Giving a last glance in the mirror, he palmed the key he’d taken from the human’s bureau drawer. The key had been difficult to find, despite the obviousness of its location when he finally found it. Kirev had thought the human would keep it somewhere more hidden.

He knew he had the right one, however; its shape was unique enough that he didn’t question that aspect of things at least…and once he’d found it, it hadn’t been difficult to take. All Kirev had to do was push the human into remembering his mouth on his cock the night before, all the while dressing leisurely in front of the mirror. As a result, the human hadn’t been watching his hands. He hadn’t been looking at him at all, really, as Kirev filled his mind with memory.

For that and other reasons, Kirev also knew the human intended to do more than simply fuck his mouth that night.

If all went well, Kirev wouldn’t around for that, however.

Stuffing the odd, cylindrical key into his pants’ pocket while the other’s back remained turned, he kept his face smooth.

Seconds later, he was following the human’s echoing steps down the painting-lined corridor.
 

“HAVE YOU MET my new employee?” Dan said, winking as he smiled at the woman in the low-cut emerald dress. “His name is Kirev.”

The woman gazed up at him, staring unabashedly at his face before her eyes slid down the rest of him. “Oh, my,” she said, fanning herself a little humorously. “He’s positively yummy, Daniel.” She nudged the older human with one bare arm, giving him a knowing smirk. “…Aren’t you the naughty, naughty boy?”

Dan shrugged, giving Kirev a glance before he smiled at the woman.

“He’s very good at what he does,” he said, his voice neutral.

She laughed aloud that time, looking pointedly at Kirev’s crotch. “I’ll just bet he is.” Taking a drink out of the martini glass she held, she didn’t look away from Kirev’s body when she added, “Are you going to be loaning him out at all, Daniel?”

The male human’s hand fell possessively on Kirev’s shoulder.

“What exactly did you have in mind, Natalie?” he said drily.

She shrugged, her expression noncommittal as she continued to look over Kirev’s body in the dark brown suit. “Oh, you know. I have a few things I could use looking into.” She met Dan’s gaze meaningfully. “Estate issues, mainly.”

Relaxing slightly at her words, Dan rolled his eyes. “Not that again,” he said, his voice holding a lighter, more humorous groan. “You think your son in law is ripping you off again?”

She sighed, propping her elbow on her folded arm.

“Discretion would be appreciated, Danny-boy,” she said in a mock-scolding voice, glancing meaningfully around the room. Turning her back on the other guests, she shrugged then, lifting a penciled eyebrow. “But yes. There have been…discrepancies.”

“Why don’t you just fire him?” Dan said, shaking his head. “Isn’t that what husbands are for? He’s running the company these days, isn’t he? Your latest one?”

She shrugged delicately. “What can you do? He’s family.”

“He’s a con artist,” Dan snorted. “When is Anna going to wise up?”

“Tom will keep an eye on him,” she said. “Until we have evidence, I’d rather not cause Anna to run off to Europe again. She can be
so
dramatic…”

Kirev tuned out their words, folding his hands at the base of his back.

He glanced around the high-ceilinged room, barely listening as they continued to talk about the treachery of in-laws and the stupidity of children, as well as the curse of having ungodly amounts of money.

His eyes returned to the windows, more often than they should, and the view of the ocean there. It was stunning. He’d never seen a view quite like that before; seeing so much of the ocean sprawling across his vision from the cypress-dotted cliffs out to a distant horizon somehow made that expanse of water appear even more dizzyingly large.

Then again, Kirev spent most of his childhood in a dirt prison. The largest thing in his world had been the sky between jungle trees, when he wasn’t locked in a wooden pen.

Dan told him proudly as they pulled up to the turreted mansion that the house had once belonged to some human named “Sutro,” an icon in this city and the same man who had built the baths below the house that still bore his name. This Sutro had also designed the version of the Cliff House that stood there still, although the actual structure had burned twice since the original and had changed colors from white to a dark pink.

Still dubbed “The Gingerbread Palace” by locals, the Victorian structure had been stubbornly rebuilt by Sutro’s heirs with the help of some of the wealthiest families in San Francisco, including the man who now owned his estate on Sutro Heights.

Kirev had never seen a house so large before.

The latest owner had expanded it, and spent lavishly on the gardens and surrounding forests as well as the modernization of the interior. He’d also discontinued allowing the public to use those same forested grounds, Dan informed him, mainly due to security concerns and some particularly severe instances of vandalism.

Tearing his eyes off the view out those windows of a sunset sky over a dark blue ocean, Kirev forced himself to focus on why he was here.

He forced his expression to remain casual as he scanned faces and bodies of other well-dressed guests. He noted a grand piano in the corner by the window along with several cocktail waiters roaming through the crowd carrying trays of drinks and
hors d’oeuvres
, but he had trouble telling the actual guests apart, other than via their ages and their hair and eye color. Without his light, he had no way to categorize them, really.

The balcony windows were open to let in the faintly brine-smelling breeze and he could hear more than one seagull in the distance, likely from the cliffs by the water. He was still glancing around at faces, noting a few of the men smoking on that same balcony, when his eyes focused abruptly on a person he hadn’t noticed until then.

Another seer.

She had to be…he would have known even apart from her clothing.

She stood with a cluster of humans on the other side of the high-ceilinged room, not far from a second balcony he also hadn’t noticed. Catching her eye briefly when he realized she’d been staring at him, Kirev gave her a subtle nod, smiling faintly.

Her eyes held more meaning than the smile she gave him in return.

Glancing over the clothing her owner had undoubtedly dressed her in, Kirev fought not to scowl. He knew he couldn’t afford to have his anger show on his face, not here, but even so, it was difficult to keep a neutral expression, even with his training.

He let his eyes linger briefly on the dress open down to her navel in the front, barely covering her nipples on either side. Her long hair hung loose around her shoulders, dyed a dark, unnatural-looking red and striking next to the more conservative hair styles of the wealthy human women. The texture of the seer’s hair was also less straight than that of most seers, who generally had darker coloring and black, straight hair, like an Asian human. Of course, there was variation among seers too, so the texture could have been a genetic anomaly, not something this human had done to make her look more like a Caucasian human.

Kirev had trouble believing it fully, however.

Letting a frown touch his lips, more for her benefit than his own that time, Kirev looked at the high cuts on the sides of the dress below a belt-like waist, displaying her thighs down to her ankles above shoes so high and teetering they must be difficult to walk in.

When he met her gaze that time, her lips had thinned.

She didn’t look embarrassed at his staring. On the contrary, she seemed to have taken it how he meant it, and nodded to him again, a subtle seer’s thank you.

As in,
thank you for your sympathy, brother. Yes, he is an asshole.

Kirev let the faint smile return to his lips.

Just then however, the blonde-haired male hovering over her laid a very possessive-looking hand on her arm. He turned his head, looking past her bare shoulder to give Kirev an openly warning look. When her neck jerked strangely towards the same blonde-haired male, Kirev winced, noticing for the first time that in addition to the collar she wore, that same hovering rapist held a leash to her, hooked to her collar by a thin chain.

Staring at the smug smile of the human standing there, Kirev fought a flush of pure fury.

The blonde-haired human didn’t seem to have figured out Kirev was a seer. He just thought him a jealous human, admiring his possession.

Moreover, whoever he was, he clearly expected Kirev to recognize him.

Was he the host? He did not look like the images Kirev had been shown of him. Moreover, he was too young; in fact, he had to be one of the youngest humans there, maybe in his late twenties at the oldest according to Kirev’s understanding of human age.

Definitely not the host, then.

From what Kirev could tell, the host was not here at all.

“…What do you think, Kirev?” a voice said from beside him.

Jumping slightly, Kirev turned.

He found himself facing Dan, and now several other humans who had joined him and the woman in the emerald dress. He could tell from their expressions that they had wandered over in part because they had noticed the collar. Most of them practically hovered, staring up at Kirev’s face with curiosity in their eyes.