Kirev's Door by JC Andrijeski Read Free Book Online

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