Hidden Gates

by D T Dyllin

  “It’s just more teenager dramatics. She’ll get over it eventually,” my father stated blandly.

  “She doesn’t talk to anyone, she’s barely eaten, and she just sleeps all the time.” Of course I sleep all the time! I wanted to shout. When my dreams all seemed to contain Bryn, and my reality was lacking . . . Well, it didn’t seem like much of a choice.

  “She’ll snap out of it. You’ll see.” Yep, my father is seriously deluding himself.

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll come up with something.” I comforted myself with the thought that whatever they could come up with couldn’t possibly be any worse than what they’d already done. Do your worst, nothing can touch me anymore.

  My parents’ footsteps retreated down the hall, and I heaved a sigh of relief into the dark. I wished they would just leave me alone already.

  “Hello, little Seer.” I heard a vaguely familiar voice waft through my mind, which I attached to an image of Khol, the guy from the woods with creepy green luminescent eyes.

  “What do you want?” I grumbled, not really sure if I was imagining his voice or not.

  “I’m not a figment of your imagination.”

  “Then how did you know what I was thinking if you’re not all in my mind? Besides, that’s just what a figment would say.” I scrunched up my face in a display of my skepticism.

  “As I said before, I linked myself to you. It comes with certain advantages, such as me being able to communicate this way with you the way I did in the woods, along with being able to sense your emotions.”

  Advantages maybe for him, but distinct disadvantages for me. “You know, one would think that I would have gotten some kind of say in this whole linking process. I mean, I don’t like you just being able to pop into my head, and I most certainly don’t like you being able to sense my emotions.”

  I swear he chuckled. “All the most powerful Seers of old were linked to . . . creatures . . . such as myself. It is a great honor to find oneself linked to one of us, and you just want to throw me away. There are very few of us left, and most of us still sleep.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” I groused. “You won’t even tell me what you are.” I flopped onto my stomach as if he were really in the room and I could turn away from him.

  “All in due time.”

  He paused long enough that I thought he wasn’t there anymore. “Hello?” I mentally called.

  “Watch the rerun of the evening news tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Watch the rerun of the evening news tonight, and then we’ll have something to discuss.” And with that, I felt a mental pop that let me know he was really gone. Weird. Or was it more weird how casually I was accepting this new creepy guy into my life? Or maybe I’d grown up with so much weird that one more thing didn’t really seem like a big deal.

  I had no idea what time it was, and I really didn’t care about the stupid evening news or Khol’s demand that I watch it. I slid my eyes closed and wanted nothing more than to doze off again so I could dream of Bryn. But just when I was on the precipice of dreamland, my new T.V. clicked on. With a start, I sat up in bed to see who had turned it on, and as I swung my head around, I realized I was the only one in my room. With clear certainty I knew somehow Khol was responsible, especially when I saw the evening news was currently on display. “Why the hell does he want me to watch this?” I grumbled to myself, trying to focus on what was on the screen, my eyes still slightly blurry.

  A blonde anchorwoman was speaking. “And tonight we have a special treat . . . We have Senator Bill Wexington in our studio. As many of you know, he’s been touring our illustrious state of Pennsylvania the last couple of days, trying to garner as many votes for the upcoming election as possible. When he asked to stop by and chat with us, we couldn’t have been happier.”

  The screen split. The female anchorwoman remained on the left side, and on the right appeared an older man with silver hair, and the title Senator Bill Wexington scrolled across the bottom of the screen. I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. I know him. I know that man. Only when I had seen him, he had been at least twenty years younger, but there was no mistaking who he was.

  As he began to talk, I saw a quick flash of the alien “under” his skin. It was like seeing two men, one a human and one an alien, taking up the same space. Their features were mingled together somehow, and yet they were separate. “Oh my God,” I whispered in horror. “How is this possible?”

  “Apparently your vision was one from the past. It has been many years since the creature has merged with the man,” Khol’s voice answered in my mind. “They are one now.”

  “But how? Why?” I stared at the screen, unable to look away.

  “Your vision showed the how. Obviously, it was important for you to see what you were shown. As you already know, Seers see all that pertains to the gates.”

  “But if that happened so long ago, why didn’t any other Seer have a vision pertaining to it when it actually happened?”

  “I can only offer you an educated guess as to why no one else saw it when it happened. You are the strongest Seer to be born in a long time, as I’ve previously stated. For some reason, maybe no one else had the power to see it. You are just now coming into your powers, so you were shown.”

  “Oh.” Yeah, that made sense, I guessed. But there were so many other nagging questions. For one,“Why can’t anyone else see what he really is then? I’m sure I’m not the only Seer who’s laid eyes on him in all this time.”

  “Yes, there is that as well.” Khol paused for a few heartbeats as I stared, mind reeling while I watched the T.V. What did this “alien” want? Why did he lay low for all these years only to emerge now? Or had he? “There are many questions for which I do not have the answers as of yet, my little Seer.”

  My little Seer? “So what do we do then?” I asked, choosing to ignore his little term of endearment, at least for the moment. I was certainly not his by any definition I was aware of.

  “We watch. We wait. We gather power. When things become clearer, we make a move.”

  “Great. So basically, we do nothing.” I fumbled for the T.V. remote and turned it off.

  Khol sighed in my mind. “Watching, waiting, and gathering power is not nothing.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care anyways.” I slid back down in my bed and shut my eyes. None of it meant anything without Bryn.

  I heard a low growl echo through my mind. “Your childish woes are nothing compared to what we face. More than just you will be affected—this is my world, too.” I didn’t respond and crossed my arms over my chest, hoping that by being linked to me, he would pick up on what my body language was saying.

  Another growl echoed through my mind. Huh. So it worked. “Stop being so childish,” Khol snapped, anger evident in his voice.

  “Leave me alone,” I snapped back. I felt the mental pop signaling that he was gone from my mind, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to deal with anything right now, let alone crazy aliens who were up for Congress or some shit.

  I stared off into the dark, waiting for sleep to claim me once again so I could be whisked off into Bryn’s imaginary arms. Unfortunately for me, Khol had other ideas.

  A low growl sounding outside of my head caused me to sit up and almost choke on my tongue as Khol, live and in the flesh, stalked towards my bed in the dark. His luminescent eyes glowed an eerie green, casting shadows across his angry face. The room buzzed and crackled with the foreign energy of his powers, and the air seemed thicker somehow. Khol’s physical presence made every molecule in my body stand up to attention and quiver with excitement. Whatever he was, my powers definitely seemed to like him.

  “What are you doing here?” I gasped in shock. He said before that he wasn’t going to hurt me, but it was
hard to remember with the predatory look he was currently wearing on his face.

  “Trying to make you understand,” he spoke through clenched teeth. He stopped at the edge of my bed and glared down at me.

  “What? That you’re good at intimidating me? You’ve already made that point clear before.” Then I had a thought that made me relax slightly. “Wait, are you really here? Or just here like in the woods before?” Because he got here awfully quick. Maybe the connection was just better this time around.

  “I am here, in the flesh this time. I would not be able to make the point that I am going to otherwise.” His eyes glinted with something I couldn’t decipher. It’s really hard to read someone with green glowy eyes, I was discovering.

  “Oh.” I gulped, nothing left to say. What kind of point did he have to make to me in the flesh? Was he going to smack me around? Threaten me? My mind was reeling with possibilities, compiling a list of all the horrible things he could do to me. But what he did do took me by complete surprise because it never would have made it on that list.

  He leaned down faster than I’d ever seen anyone move, even fully matured Guardians, and crushed his lips to mine. When I gasped with surprise, he took the opportunity to plunge his tongue into my mouth. The white-hot heat his kiss caused to surge through my body was even more unexpected. I found myself kissing him back with enthusiasm and shuddering with pleasure as his hands skimmed down my body.

  I wanted—I wanted—Bryn. An image of him skittered across my mind and instantly cooled my heated skin. How could I be kissing someone else—or something else? I love Bryn, and only him. “Stop!” I said, shoving Khol away from me, although with how easily I did it, I knew he had let me. “What the hell was that?” I demanded, too angry to care how scary he was anymore.

  His eyes met mine with heat, glowing even brighter, if that was even possible, and a satisfied smirk spread across his face. “I was teaching you a lesson.”

  “A lesson? Really. And what would that be? That you’re an asshole that forces unwanted attention on girls that are smaller and weaker than them?” I ground my teeth together so hard my jaw started to hurt.

  “No—that Bryn is not the only one who can stoke your fires, that you need to get out of this bed and start focusing on the bigger problems at hand. Your life hasn’t ended because he is gone.”

  Stoke my fires? Who the hell talks that way? “Yeah, I have hormones, so what? And you’re a really good kisser—congratulations. I’m sure practically any hot guy could come in here and get some kind of reaction out of me. That doesn’t change the fact that I love Bryn and will never want to be with anyone but him. Love means something to me, and Bryn does it for me physically—and beyond.”

  Khol’s smirk didn’t even falter a little bit. “Bryn is not the one for you. You will figure that out eventually, in your own time. As you grow into your powers, you will find that you will crave . . . more.”

  More? The way he said that made it sound like he was implying he meant more than just sexually, but I had no idea what he was trying to suggest. “Whatever. Now that you tried to teach me a lesson—and failed—will you please leave so that I can go to sleep? Dream Bryn is waiting.”

  “I will leave and let you go to sleep—after you promise to get out of bed and resume your life starting tomorrow. Only then will I leave.” Khol crossed his thick, muscular arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at me. I didn’t know him very well, but I could tell he meant business.

  “Fine. Whatever. I agree. So leave. Now.” Whatever. What was he going to do, come in the morning, drag me out of bed, and force me to go to school? Yeah, right.

  He produced a newspaper seemingly out of thin air and tossed it to me. “There is an article about Senator Bill Wexington in there. I thought you might want to read it.”

  I glanced down at the paper for a second, and when I looked back up, Khol was gone. What the hell? Oh well, at least he was gone. I turned back to the paper and searched for the article he had mentioned, my curiosity too great to ignore it.

  When I was done reading the article, I was even more confused. “So aliens are fans of gun control,” I muttered to myself. “So what?” Ugh. All the article had told me was that Senator Bill Wexington didn’t stand behind the Second Amendment of the Constitution. It wasn’t like he was making any highly suspicious suggestions for his campaign to get elected to Congress. I wasn’t a really political person, but I knew Senator Bill Wexington wasn’t the first, nor would he be the last, politician to suggest gun control in some form.

  My phone beeped, signaling a new text message. My heart sped up in anticipation. Even though I knew that Bryn didn’t have his phone, I kept hoping he’d find a way to contact me. So far I’d heard absolutely nothing from him, and even a text message at this point would make me jump for joy.

  I peered down at my phone and heaved a sigh of disappointment. The text was from Jenna. I hadn’t really talked to her since Bryn had been shipped away and I had sunk into the depths of despair, but I did grace her with responses to her text messages at least. I think she understood, mostly, that I wasn’t up to talking about everything that had happened. I opened my phone and read.

  So who was the guy who wasn’t Bryn u were just making out w/ ???

  My jaw dropped open. How the hell did she know?

  IDK what ur talking about, I responded.

  LIAR! stared back at me as her response.

  I didn’t know what to say. How did she know? Nausea rolled through my stomach at the thought of Bryn ever finding out. He hadn’t even been gone a week yet, and I had kissed someone else, or rather someone else had kissed me. I really didn’t think Bryn would see the distinction, especially because I had kissed him back, if only for a moment. My phone beeped again, and I turned my focus back to the glowing screen.

  SPILL IT!

  IDK y u think that . . . yeah, no. I hit send and hoped she would buy it.

  My phone beeped again almost immediately.

  Squirrels r chatty & nosey. Stop lying. :/

  Damn Speakers! I always forget about her sneaky little spies. The image of a little voyeur squirrel hanging around outside my window and then running to Jenna to report any indiscretions on my part was absolutely horrifying.

  And crazy, I typed back and turned my phone off. I could picture Jenna sitting in her room steaming mad. I would probably have a full mailbox of angry texts when I turned my phone back on, but it was better than dealing with her now.

  I slumped back into bed, blinking my eyes in the darkness. I found myself feeling oddly vulnerable, as if a whole army of squirrels could be hanging out in the tree across from my window, watching me. I stumbled across my floor and pulled down the shade, checking to make sure there weren’t any gaps for nosey rodents to peek through. Once satisfied, I flopped back into bed and closed my eyes, yearning for nothing more than to dream about Bryn.

  11

  “Rise and shine, my little Seer.” Khol’s raspy voice echoed through my mind.

  “No. Go away,” I grumbled, pulling my pillow over my head. But pillows only buffer against noise on the outside of your head, so there was no escape for me.

  “You agreed to get back to your life starting today if I left you alone last night. I did, and now you are.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “I can come in person to wake you up if you would like.” I could hear the smile in his voice. I lay there for another couple of moments. I’m really not sure how long it was before I started to doze again, the threat of Khol coming in person temporarily forgotten—until my pillow was snatched from my grasp.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, seeing Khol standing beside my bed with my pillow in his hands. His tall frame seemed to take up more room in the light of day, and his dark auburn hair looked like fire in the morning sun. His mere physical presence in the same ro
om as me still caused my body to shiver with excitement. Damn . . . not good.

  His lips turned up into a slight smile as he gazed at me. “Would you like me to help you shower as well?” The way his creepy eyes slid over my body made me very self-conscious all of a sudden, and I pulled my covers up under my arms as a shield. I didn’t want him getting any ideas and trying to kiss me like he had last night.

  “Eww . . . how old are you anyways? You have to be at least in your mid-twenties; I just turned eighteen. If you would have caught me a few days earlier, I’d be jailbait for you.”

  Khol’s smile faltered, but only slightly. “Seventeen is old enough where I am from. Besides, I am not human. Your laws mean little to me.”

  “Yeah, about that. Are you ever going to tell me what you are?” Besides creepy, that is.

  “All in due time.”

  “Fine. Whatever. So I suppose that if I don’t get up and go to school today, you’re just going to harass me all day instead?”

  “Harass? No. But I am sure we could find some very . . . entertaining . . . things for us to do to help you back on your way to recovery.” His eyes slid over me again, letting me know exactly what he was thinking. “The way your power hums to me constantly, calling to me, is like a siren’s song, one that I yearn to answer with everything that I am.”

  My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at Kohl. There was no point in denying his words excited me, or more aptly, they revved my hormones, but that was beside the point. Because I was a teenager, that really wasn’t a huge accomplishment. “I love Bryn,” I snapped. “There will be no answering of my siren’s song by anyone but him.”