Kirev's Door

by JC Andrijeski

  “What are you doing, sleeping here?” the male in front said, pushing up a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He frowned at Kirev. “Go home. The party’s over, square!”

  “Leave him alone, Randy!” a girl said from next to him, grabbing his sweater-clad arm. “Someone really knocked him around. Look at him. He’s bleeding...”

  “So he got a good pounding?” the one named Randy said, making a contemptuous sound. “He probably deserved it. He’s obviously drunk as a skunk, being out here...”

  Giving Randy a disapproving look, the girl began walking purposefully towards Kirev.

  “Sharon...” Randy said, sharpening his voice. “Stay away from him! You have no idea who that guy is!”

  She ignored him though, folding her arms over the powder blue sweater draped over her shoulders and her white blouse, jutting her chin as little as she focused on Kirev with some determination. She walked right up to him.

  Kirev himself hadn’t moved, unable to decide how to respond.

  Did they not realize what he was?

  He’d never been one of those seers who could pass.

  As soon as she got closer to him, she paused in her steps, as if seeing him clearly for the first time. She sucked in a breath when she met his gaze. Kirev stiffened, feeling his body coil into a near-fighting stance as he saw her eyes widen.

  She knew what he was. She had to. They would run now.

  They would run and call SCARB to come pick him up.

  But she didn’t run. She didn’t even scream.

  Instead she gaped up at him, as if his appearance had completely shocked her.

  “Your eyes!” she said, that wonder in her voice. “What is wrong with your eyes?”

  Kirev didn’t know how to answer that.

  How did she not know he was a seer? Had she never seen one before? Even if she had not seen one in person––which was possible given that she was not obviously rich enough or old enough to own one, or the right gender to have fought in any wars––how had she not seen one on television? How had she not learned about his kind in school?

  Did she not at least know they had unusual eye colors?

  “How did your eyes get to be that color?” she said, her voice still holding that breathless wonder. “Were you born that way?”

  She flushed, her cheeks turning a bright pink.

  It occurred to Kirev that she’d just realized she was being rude.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, even as he thought it, covering her mouth briefly with a hand, as if to take back her last words. “It’s just...I’ve never seen eyes like that before...” She stared up at Kirev’s gold irises as if she couldn’t tear her gaze away, a near awe in her expression. Looking over the rest of him, that awe shifted again, making her blush more.

  A plume of interest came off her light, curiosity with what bordered on shyness.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, that shyness also in her voice.

  Kirev frowned.

  Still, something in his muscles lost their tension.

  Another girl in the group standing behind them laughed. “I think you better watch yourself, Randy. Looks like Sharon’s real gone on your drunken cube...”

  Sharon flushed a little pinker, folding her arms tighter across her chest.

  “You should come with us,” she said, her voice shy again, but more urgent. “We can take you to the doctor. Get your arm looked at.”

  Kirev fought with what to say to that, too.

  “He’s a spaz, Sharon!” the girl called out, shrieking with laughter. “Leave him alone!”

  Somehow, Kirev found his voice in that, even as he met the girl’s gaze.

  “I’ll...I’ll be all right,” he stammered, looking into the innocence of her blue eyes.

  “You sure?” She sounded doubtful. Gesturing shyly towards his arm, she frowned lightly, the expression putting a faint wrinkle into her brow. “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s all right,” Kirev assured her. “I...” He fought for a good story. “I’m going to my friend’s house,” he finished awkwardly. “He can take me. To the doctor, I mean.”

  She gave him another doubtful look.

  When Kirev’s expression didn’t waver, she nodded.

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

  Kirev smiled. “Thank you for your concern,” he said, bowing a little. “You are very kind.”

  She hesitated again, as if she wanted to say more.

  Kirev could feel her wanting to prolong the conversation, to keep talking to him in some way. It hit him that she thought him handsome. She was hoping he would ask for her phone number.

  He didn’t. The idea dumbfounded him, truthfully.

  Another few seconds passed.

  Then she backed away, smiling. “Okay,” she said, embarrassed now. “As long as you’re okay...?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “Thank you.”

  “Okay.”

  She got a few more feet away, then turned her back to him, walking just as purposefully back up the grassy hill, her sweater flopping lightly on her upper back at each step in her black heel-less shoes.

  Kirev just watched her go.

  When she rejoined her friends, the one named Randy with the blue and white sweater flung a possessive arm around her shoulders, glaring at Kirev as he steered her back down the path that led out of the park. It wasn’t the glare of a human at a seer, though.

  It was the glare of one rival to another.

  Equals, in a strange sense.

  Kirev felt the word somewhere in the middle of his chest.

  He looked back at that strange skyline, at the houses cascading down the steep hill, the blue sky above his head.

  Even the air tasted different here. He couldn’t put it into words, but it did.

  Still standing there, gazing out over that view of distant skyscrapers and the Victorian houses lining the roads near where he stood, Kirev realized he knew.

  He knew what Coreq had done. What this place was.

  Tentatively, he opened his light...something he never would have dared to do in a human city in the world where he’d been born. He opened it as much as he could.

  He sent a high, loud flare up into the Barrier space.

  No one answered.

  No one answered at all.

  He screamed out again with his light, throwing caution aside entirely that time. He opened his light as wide as it could go...screaming louder, looking for someone, anyone who might feel him. Anyone of his own kind...anyone at all.

  SCARB.

  A security guard from one of the nearby wealthy humans.

  A sex toy purchased from Asia to entertain an aging father.

  A corporate-owned spy working downtown.

  Nothing. None of them answered him.

  Silence echoed back at him from inside the Barrier’s wave.

  There was no one here.

  He was utterly alone.

  Kirev was the only seer alive in this world.

  Were they all dead?

  No. Not dead.

  They are not changed at all.

  You are.

  You are somewhere new...

  The understanding echoed there, irrefutable.

  Coreq had called it a door. He’d told Kirev he was bringing him somewhere where no one would ever find him. He’d told him he was doing it to help him.

  He’d brought him to this place.

  This world that was like the one he’d left, only with none of his people.

  No one like him at all.

  Kirev felt himself breathing too much, even as the view in front of him dipped, dimmed, growing dark. He found himself fighting dizziness, fighting a hard knot in his chest, what felt like every tendril of his light collapsing inside itself...going into shock maybe. When he could see again, he was kneeling on the grass, gasping, fighting to breathe, to even see...

  Tears ran down his face. He let out a low groan.

  Coreq left him here.

&nb
sp; He’d left him here alone.

  No. He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have done this.

  This wasn’t possible. This place did not exist. It could not.

  He was dead. He had to be dead.

  You are not dead, Kirev... a voice repeated, an echo in light.

  Kirev stared around at the colorful buildings, watching a seagull wing through the sky, calling to others of its kind as it sliced through the air.

  He knelt there, his mind nearly blank, fighting the pounding in his chest that might just kill him, that might actually stop his light completely.

  He still knelt there when a soft voice spoke to him.

  You are not alone, brother, it said. I love you. You are never alone...

  Kirev couldn’t make sense of the words.

  He couldn’t make sense of the pain slamming through his light, the lack of feeling in him, the panic that wanted to crawl over and consume his mind and heart. Even so, he nodded, feeling the truth of what the other had said. Feeling it, without understanding anything about it at all.

  Maybe that was enough.

  To live one more day at least...maybe that was enough.

  He remembered the kindness in that woman’s light blue eyes. Her concern for him.

  Humans were never the enemy, brother... that softer voice whispered, reminding him. When you finally understand that, you will be free...

  Kirev could only kneel there, understanding that to be true, too.

  Understanding it, without understanding anything at all.

  You are never alone, brother, Coreq whispered. You are never alone...

  Kirev knelt there, nodding, tears running down his face.

  “I’m not alone,” he repeated, his hands clutching the new green grass, holding on as if to keep him from flying off the surface of the world. “I’m not alone...”

  The presence inside him expanded, running into his head and chest and throat and belly like liquid fire. It burned there, brighter, blinding him all over again as it pulsed, filling him with warmth, filling him with more feeling than he could comprehend, more than he could hold.

  All Kirev felt in those few seconds, all he could make sense of was...

  Love.

  Whatever that presence was, it loved him.

  It filled him with love.

  “I’m not alone,” he repeated, feeling his breath come deeper, slower. He fisted the grass in his bruised fingers, taking a deep breath, feeling his mind and light stabilize somewhere within it. “...I’m not alone,” he said, quieter.

  That time, he almost believed it.

  * * *

  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THiS CHARACTER?

  Read the QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY series, starting with:

  BLACK IN WHITE (Quentin Black Mystery #1)

  Picked up as a suspect in the Wedding Murders, Black faces off with profiler Miri, who works for the cops, and who finds herself strangely drawn to him. Losing herself in Black's bizarre world, she enters a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer, who might be Black himself.

  or

  WANT TO READ MORE SET IN KIREV’S HOME WORLD?

  Try the ALLIE’S WAR SERIES, starting with:

  ROOK (Allie’s War Book One)

  Yanked out of her life by the mysterious Revik, Allie discovers that her blood may not be as “human” as she always thought. When Revik tells her she’s the Bridge, a mystical being meant to usher in the evolution of humanity––or possibly its extinction––Allie must choose between the race that raised her and the one where she might truly belong. A psychic, science fiction romance set in a modern, gritty version of Earth.

  * * *

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  QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY is a dark, gritty paranormal romance and mystery series starring brilliant and mysterious antihero Quentin R. Black, along with his partner, psychic forensic psychologist Miram Fox. For fans of Sherlock Holmes and paranormal romance, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black tries to redeem himself by making the world safe for his kind.

  THE ALLIE’S WAR SERIES is a dark, unique and gritty psychic romance involving a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner in crime, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled unpredictable twists.

  THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE SERIES is a dystopian new adult romance about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she has to navigate a treacherous world full of enemies who pose as friends, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, a modern day version of the coliseum.

  THE GATE SHIFTER SERIES is an unusual shifter romance centering on shifters from another world altogether, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth. Part urban fantasy, part detective series, part paranormal romance, part science fiction adventure, the Gate Shifter series explores crime solving, interstellar warfare and alien romance with the least likely candidates imaginable.

  * * *

  Read More from JC Andrijeski

  http://jcandrijeski.com

  “Seeking Truth in Made-Up Worlds”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I’m a USA TODAY bestselling author who writes paranormal mystery, romance and science fiction, often with a sexy, metaphysical and apocalyptic bent. My work has been featured in anthologies, online literary, art and fiction magazines as well as print venues such as NY Press. I travel extensively and have lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia and from coast to coast in the continental United States, but currently I live and work full time in Bangkok, Thailand.

  To learn more about me and my writing, please visit jcandrijeski.com.

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  KIREV’S DOOR

  A Quentin Black Prequel

  Copyright © 2016 by JC Andrijeski

  Published previously as part of Uncollected Anthology

  Issue #4: May 2015

  Portals and Passageways

  Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

  J.M. Rising Horse Creations

  www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

  2015

  Link with me at: http://jcandrijeski.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.