Bloodstone: Sparrowhawk Book 1 by Kathryn Hoff

Author:Kathryn Hoff [Hoff, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-20T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Secrets and dreams

No children? Ever? I felt like I’d been slapped. Rachel tactfully looked away and busied herself with her instruments.

Tears filled my eyes. I had dreamed, as most girls do, of having a baby to care for, even though I wasn’t ready to have one yet. To suddenly learn it would never happen…

“Of course, you can always adopt a child.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Here,” she said briskly, “let me look at that graft. My, that looks nasty. The skin seal should have been changed days ago.” She peeled off the transparent seal, none too gently. Underneath, it was nasty-looking, the skin red and oozing, the puckered edges of the graft beginning to part from the skin around it.

“I’ve been stuck on the ship,” I mumbled. “I couldn’t exactly ask the Corridor Patrol to fix it, could I?”

“I also know something else,” she said, fiddling with swabs and ointment on the wound. “I know you’ve been hearing the voice from the relic.”

I snatched my arm away. “No. Your instruments can’t tell you that.”

“They can. Telepathic interaction stimulates a very specific area of the amygdala. Your brain shows that activity—not nearly as much as is evident in Balan, but still, it’s there.”

I said nothing. I felt like she was reading my mind.

She sighed. “Everyone has secrets, Patch. I don’t want to intrude, but it’s part of my job to understand the effect the relic may have on members of this expedition. There.” She smoothed a new skin seal over the wound. “That will heal better now. You’ll still need a permanent regraft.”

“Thanks.” The wound under the transparent seal still looked red and raw. I pulled my sleeve down to hide it.

“Patch, for the safety of all of us, I need to know what the voice has been telling you.”

I could think of no reason to keep it from her. “Home,” I said. “It wants—commands—us to take it home. It says that peace and joy are there.”

“And do you know where its home is? Feel drawn toward the Gloom?”

“No. When I asked it to show me, it asked for blood.”

She fiddled with her instruments. “The voice you hear, what do you think it is?”

I shrugged. “A spirit, I suppose.”

“Have you ever heard other spirits?”

I hesitated. “Are you going to make fun of me if I say yes?”

She smiled. “Not at all. I’m well aware that Gavorans have a long cultural history of spiritual communications.”

“Then yes. But the voice of the relic is different.”

Rachel asked me a lot of questions. How was the voice different? Where was I when I heard it? Had I ever touched the relic? Did I feel any need to feed it?

I answered everything I could—she seemed to know so much already, I couldn’t think of any reason not to.

Finally, Rachel sat back. “Who else knows you’ve been hearing the voice?”

“Only Kojo.”

She nodded. “You’re wise to keep it to yourself. And don’t trust what it tells you is true.”

Could a spirit lie? I glanced nervously at the vault lurking in a dark corner of the hold.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.