Kirev's Door (7 page)

“You okay, little brother?” Wreg asked him.

Kirev nodded, exhaling his relief.

“You have no idea how good your timing is, brother,” he said in Prexci.

The two human guards were already down, one crumpled at the base of the wooden bookcase like Dan, while the other lay next to the heavy velvet drapes covering the largest window, his body in an awkward tangle.

Kirev watched as Wreg clicked his fingers at the last seer to walk in behind him, indicating for her to frisk the humans, and likely, to take their guns.

Through all of that, Kirev had forgotten about the old human in the chair.

Well, he had until the gun went off.

5

BROTHER

“GAOS!”
KIREV CRIED out, jerking sideways even as Wreg lunged towards him.

The big seer reached him in a heartbeat, shoving at his shoulder, hard.

The bullet slammed into Kirev’s arm even as he spoke the word, then must have gone right through him before Wreg’s big hand met his shoulder. Kirev felt more than heard the bullet leave him; he let out a gasp as a second shot whizzed by his head and ricocheted off something metal behind him.

He barely had time to process any of that before he was on the floor, panting, not far from the fallen body of Dan.

He let out a groan when the first wave of pain hit, clutching at his arm.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

Wreg, who had been leaning over the human by then, turned, grinning at him.

Before Kirev could yank himself up to a seated position, the larger seer knelt beside him, his fingers feeling over the wound in his arm.

Kirev could see over Wreg’s broad shoulder that the gray-haired human had been incapacitated by the light of the other seers, although not knocked out, as Dan had been.

“Gaos…”
Kirev gasped. He fought to get his arm free of the other male, but the big seer wouldn’t let him go. Eventually he just had to lie there, enduring it.

“You’re all right,” Wreg pronounced, even as Kirev groaned again from his prodding. “It passed through clean. Put pressure on it, and we’ll bandage you up when we get out of here.”

His voice was gruff.

Kirev saw the big seer avoiding his eyes when he added,

“Sorry, little brother. That was my fault. I should have warned you…we can’t knock this fucker out. We need him awake…for this part, at least.”

Still gasping, fighting to control the pain writhing through his whole upper body like fire, Kirev only nodded. It felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to his arm, but it was sinking in that he wouldn’t die from the wound, or even be seriously incapacitated.

“I’m still coming tonight,” he managed, gasping.

Above him, one of the other male seers chuckled. When Kirev glanced up, the seer grinned at him, ruffling his hair affectionately.

“We’ll bring the pup,” that seer said, his gold eyes still smiling at Kirev’s face. “He’s earned that much, hasn’t he, brother Wreg?”

Wreg only grunted, noncommittal. He rose gracefully back to his feet.

Kirev watched as him and another male seer bent over the gray-haired human slumped in the leather chair. He noticed again that they’d taken over his light, that the human’s expression had gone slack-jawed, his blue eyes blurred out of focus. Kirev stared at his limp arms and the smoldering cigar where it burned a hole into the expensive carpet until he felt a different set of eyes on him and looked up. The naked, female seer who had been leaning on the chair was staring at him, her eyes showing her to be confused, also in physical pain.

Looking at her face, he could tell also that she had been drugged.

“It’s all right, sister,” he assured her. “We’ll take you out of here.”

Wreg and two of the other seers gave Kirev a look. Then Wreg’s mouth pressed into a grim line as he looked at the female seer, right before he nodded.

Kirev felt a rush of relief, even as he looked back at the female.

She didn’t look good. Not at all.

“You’ll be all right, sister,” he told her again.

She didn’t answer him.

He felt nothing on her light at all. It was inert, completely devoid of emotion.

The fact that this piece of shit had wanted him to molest her again made him physically sick.

“Yes, he’s a nice little human butcher, aren’t you cousin?” Wreg muttered, hefting the human up higher in the chair by the robe to keep him from sliding to the floor.

Kirev watched as Wreg and the other two seers standing over the chair all went silent. He saw the irises of the one facing his direction slide out of focus as the three of them receded into the Barrier to begin working on the human.

Kirev just lay there, fighting to control the pain in his arm as they worked.

He was close enough to get glimpses, despite the fact that they were using higher levels in their light than Kirev could yet access in his own. He got flickers of structure, of dimensions…mathematical equations. Whatever it was, it didn’t all feel abstract. There was a physical component of some kind, beyond simply pass codes and security protocols…

“Blueprints,” he muttered.

Kirev felt understanding bloom in his light.

“Gaos
…you’re getting the full layout of the lab,” he said next.

The seer who stood guard for them, holding one of the guns she’d pulled off the human security agents, let out a low snort, arching an eyebrow in his direction.

“Of course,” she said, tossing her black hair back over her shoulder.

The female seer wore a blue dress, one more like what the human women wore, Kirev noticed, not like the seer he’d seen downstairs.

“…How do you expect us to find it, brother?” she said, her voice holding scorn. “Or did you think they would have a map to their illegal experiments in the front of the building?”

“Find what?” Kirev said, genuinely puzzled. “What experiments?”

“Shut up, Ute,” Wreg said, giving her a hard look.

Kirev fought with the questions rising in his light.

Seconds later, he decided to remain silent.

He wanted to come with them.

If he didn’t anger them or ask stupid questions or otherwise make himself a liability, they might still bring him, even injured. He was left-handed, after all; the gray-haired sadist hadn’t even gotten his gun hand.

Still, his mind turned over the female hunter’s words. He’d assumed the point would be to get rid of the lab as a whole, to destroy all of the biological agents and weapons they designed there, as well as the experiments they conducted. He’d thought the point was to hit them where it hurt…financially, at the very least…that it was more about Black Arrow being one of the largest defense contractors in all of the Americas, possibly even the world.

But that female seer made it sound like they were looking for something more specific than that. Biting his lip, Kirev remained silent as he thought about what that might be.

Illegal experiments. Could they be experimenting on seers?

The thought made him sick, but it also felt plausible.

The three seers continued to scan the blue-eyed human’s light as Kirev lay there.

He noticed they pulled information off his human mind without being particularly gentle about it. Kirev even winced involuntarily a few times as they forced their way through blocks on his light, things that his seer security teams likely put on him in an attempt to hide information. He knew some of those breakages would likely be permanent.

Even so, Kirev could feel that Wreg and the others could not get past all of those blockages either, no matter what they broke.

His security team must be very good. But then, of course they would be. Bilford was one of the richest men in the United States.

“Did you find it?” Ute asked, apparently as impatient as Kirev felt.

“We have narrowed down possibilities,” Wreg said, frowning over his shoulder at her.

“Is it what the Father said?” she pressed, rearranging her grip on the gun as she took a step closer to them. “Is it really from seer bodies they are doing this?”

Kirev tensed, looking to Wreg to hear his answer.

Wreg didn’t answer her, though.

Kirev went back to watching Ute’s face, still half-lying on the carpet. For the first time, he saw the anxiety in her light, just as he’d heard it in her voice. Whatever this thing was, or whatever she thought it was, it bothered her. It bothered her a lot.

Kirev was tempted to ask again, but remained silent when he felt the harder, warning pulse on Wreg’s light.

Turning back towards Ute, he held out a hand, motioning a question in seer sign language. He repeated the request aloud when she didn’t look over.

“Sister, could you help me up?” he said politely.

She looked at him that time, the frown still etched in her face.

Then, seeming to see something in his light or perhaps his expression, she exhaled, walking up to him. Grabbing the hand he’d extended to her, she yanked him unceremoniously to his feet, ignoring his groan when it jarred his injured arm. Her light remained focused on what Wreg and the others were doing when he looked at her next.

He could feel her frustration as she stared at Wreg’s broad back.

More than that, though, he could feel her fear.

The two of them only stood there though, not speaking again as they watched the other three work.

THEY LEFT THE building altogether approximately thirty minutes later.

It was dark downstairs as they left…ominously so.

Kirev felt nerves shooting through him as his mind fought with implications.

When he reached the bottom of that staircase leading into the main room overlooking the ocean and the dimming lights of the Cliff House and the darker structure of the Sutro Baths, Kirev saw that most of the guests he remembered were asleep on the floor by the balcony. The only person standing there now was the female seer in the revealing dress with that strangely colored, dark red hair.

She smiled at him when she saw him.

Then she frowned when she saw the blood staining his jacket where he held his arm. By then it had seeped through the brown material enough that she could likely smell it, too.