Read Online Falling Blind: The Sentinel Wars by Shannon K. Butcher - Free Book Online

fingers. He was making her food.
    “No. He was a one-night stand. Mom did a lot of drugs for a lot of years before she OD’d. Nana said she didn’t even know my dad’s name.”
    Hope winced at the ugliness, but had the decency to keep her pity to herself. “Chances are he was from another world. Another planet.”
    Rory’s hands stilled at her zipper, as that insane idea shoved every other thought, and every flashing vision from her head. “You’re telling me that my dad was an alien?”
    Hope took Rory’s hands in hers. “If it helps any, my mom was, too. In fact, I was raised on a different world before I was sent here.”
    A different world ? Rory pulled away, unwilling to believe something so obviously false. “That’s an interesting fairy tale and all, but unless you can come up with a more believable lie, I really need to go.” Away from the people who believed they were aliens.
    “Is it really so hard to believe that after what you’ve seen? Demons? Synestryn lords like Krag? Men who can heal with a touch like Logan or kill with the power and ease that Cain can?”
    “That’s different.”
    “How?”
    Um. Just because she couldn’t think of a good reason didn’t mean there wasn’t one. “I don’t know. It just is.”
    “Please, Rory. Just listen to me. If you are who we think you are, then you can’t go out there alone. You’re in terrible danger.”
    “Of that I’m acutely aware. I’ve run from these things my whole life. I’ll keep running until they catch me.”
    “You said you were looking for someone. Who?”
    “I don’t know who. Yet.”
    Hope shook her head, making her blond hair sway around her shoulders. “I don’t understand.”
    “I should just go. I don’t want to drag you into this any farther than you’ve already come. It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
    “You’re one of us. Your problems are our problems.”
    The idea of belonging somewhere, of not being a freak among these people, was as tempting as it was terrifying. “It’s not something I really like to talk about.”
    Hope took her hand again, and Rory felt a strand of warmth weave up her arm. “Please.”
    “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you the truth.”
    “Can your secret really be any harder to believe than aliens?”
    When she put it that way . . . what harm was there in telling Hope? No one was going to believe a woman who claimed to be an alien, anyway.
    Rory dragged in a long breath and gave in to the urge to spill her guts. “I see things. Things I shouldn’t see. I just want them to go away and there’s someone out there who makes it stop.”
    Hope frowned, and it made her only more beautiful, which was, frankly, hideously unfair. “What kind of things?”
    “Everything. Random bits of mundane existence. Private things. It all shoves its way into my head and I don’t want it there. It’s too much. It hurts.”
    “And this person you’re looking for makes it all stop?”
    An image of some old dude taking a leak filled her head for an instant before fading away.
    “Yes.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s just one person I’m looking for. Maybe it’s more than one. All I know is that sometimes, when I move around the city, the visions stop when I get close to them.”
    “How do you know it’s a person?”
    “If it were a place, then I could stand in one location and the visions wouldn’t come back. I figured that whoever it is who’s helping me must move away. Drive off or something. I can’t ever catch up with them.”
    “It could be a magical artifact.”
    That was something Rory had never considered. She sat there for a minute in shock, considering the possibility. “I didn’t know such things existed.”
    “They do. I’ve seen them. Cain’s sword and scabbard are both examples of such things. That’s why you can’t see his sword unless it’s drawn.”
    Now that Rory thought about it, she hadn’t noticed his sword