Lynn Viehl - [Darkyn 08 - Lords of the Darkyn 01] by Nightborn (mobi) Read Free Book Online

head, his ears flicking back and forth as he tasted the air.
    “Doucement, mon ami.” Simone tugged back on the reins to slow him to a walk as she looked ahead. The path wound through the back of her father’s property, and lack of use and maintenance had caused weeds and shrubbery to overgrow and narrow it. “They’re just keeping the old place warm for the mice now.”
    Simone dismounted as soon as she was within sight of the château’s walls, and slapped Georges on the right flank, sending him back down the trail to the convent. During her father’s absence Piers, the butler, had taken to secretly lighting the fireplaces. Although Simone had never enjoyed such comforts when she had lived here, she didn’t blame him. Her father had always believed physical comfort dulled the senses and encouraged complacency, which he regarded as intolerable. He never considered the comfort of his staff, all of whom were in their sixties and seventies now. Enduring the long winter months in a house with no central heating had simply become too much of an ordeal for them.
    Purpose, Quatorze. The only fire you will ever need.
    She went to the section of the wall ten paces from the end of the path, where she pressed three bricks in sequence. Unseen hinges groaned as internal locks released and a three-foot-wide section shifted slightly. She had to push hard to create enough space to step through—she would have to speak to Piers about oiling the rusting mechanism—and once inside the wall, she pushed it back in place. As she reached to reverse the sequence of bricks to lock it once more, she heard a series of rapid pops and froze.
    Gunfire?
    She spun around and ran along an unmarked path through thorny hedges, not stopping to free herself when untrimmed branches tore at her fluttering habit. The burning scent of wood grew intense, and smoke whitened the air, until she emerged from the ground cover at the front of the château.
    Several new, black all-terrain vehicles and an enormous unmarked truck blocked the drive, while smoke poured from the eaves and window seams on the château’s top floor. One of the maids lay by the front door, her sightless eyes staring at Simone, her features painted with congealing blood that gravity had drawn from the small black crater in the center of her brow.
    She heard glass smashing and wood ripping from inside the house, sounds so shocking to her ears they made her cringe. She slipped behind a tree trunk, pressing her back against it as she tried to catch her breath. They had killed, and now they were inside. They had set fire to the attics.
    Somehow her father’s message had come too late. That, or the courier had given it to someone before coming to the convent. But she had seen the seal, intact—
    A cry of pain broke through her horrified confusion, and Simone flew across the drive, pulling her veil across her nose and mouth as she stepped over the dead maid and went inside. A few feet down the hall an old man crawled toward her, his body leaving a wide smear of blood on the marble floor.
    “Piers.” Simone went to him, crouching down to scoop his thin, frail body into her arms. Blood immediately soaked through the front of her habit from innumerable gunshot wounds in his torso. She carried him out of the smoke to the drive, where she dropped down with him and pulled up his shirt.
    The old butler groped for her hand, squeezing it weakly when he caught it. “God have mercy on me, but there was no time.” His mouth became a straining O as he gulped in air. “I saw them outside the gate. The next moment they were at the door.” His grip tightened. “The master will be so angry, Simone. The master—”
    “I know, Piers.”
    “You must stop them. For Hel—” A sharp crack cut off his words, and his body jerked as the bullet struck his chest. He slumped against her, his last breath leaving his lungs in a thin rush.
    Simone looked up at the wisp of smoke rising from the barrel of a rifle.