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

few minutes. She won’t fight you. She won’t fight anyone.”
    The man grinned. “Can we take her with us? It is a long drive to Marseilles.”
    Pájaro shook his head. “I have another slut to deal with there. When you’ve finished, gag her and tie her up inside. She can burn with the rest of the bodies.”

Chapter 3
     
    A
    fter tearing off and using his sleeve to temporarily bind his still-bleeding leg wound, Korvel limped through the gates and started up the drive toward the burning château. The broken copper blade lodged inside his flesh wouldn’t kill him immediately, but until it was removed its poisons would continue to weaken him. The cursed metal also affected his ability to move; already he felt numb from knee to hip. Soon he wouldn’t be able to remain upright, much less walk.
    He came up behind a large unmarked truck, using it as cover when he heard men shouting and laughing. He gripped in each hand the greased blades he had recovered from the corpses by the gates and shifted his position from one side of the truck to the other. Silently he inched forward until he had a better view of the front of the château.
    On the ground lay two elderly mortals; both had been shot and appeared dead. Four other mortals stood on the drive in a quad formation, shoving back and forth between them a young female in a long gray dress and white-banded gray kerchief. She cringed and stumbled but did not resist them, her features as tight as the hands she used to clutch together the remains of her bodice. They’d already ripped open her dress.
    Not a dress, he realized, but a habit. The girl was a nun.
    The game the men were playing became immediately obvious as well; they pushed and snatched at her, pawing and groping her body as she tried to evade them. Their laughter and the girl’s struggles breached Korvel’s self-control, igniting and feeding a killing fury, until the rage wiped clean every calculated thought from his head. Now he wanted only to feel bones snapping beneath his fists, and flesh parting against his blades.
    One of the men, apparently impatient to be the first to inflict real harm on the girl, finally caught her and threw her to the ground, straddling her as he tore at his belt buckle. He had just begun to drop on top of her when Korvel reached them.
    “Animal.” With one motion he hauled the mortal off the girl and snapped his neck. As the other men reached for their weapons, he used the dead mortal’s pistol to shoot two in the head.
    The last man he shot in the knee as he was running away. Grim pleasure spread through him as he hobbled over and aimed at the back of his skull.
    “Please don’t shoot him,” a low, soft voice said in French-accented English.
    The next breath Korvel took came with the scents of green rosemary, thyme, and something sweeter and darker, warming his chest and stirring his hunger. It came from the nun, who was no longer cowering but moved with purpose as she came to kneel beside the groaning man and turn him over onto his back.
    He wondered whether she was in shock. “You would show mercy to this one, sister? He had none for you.”
    “I don’t care about that.” The nun leaned forward and murmured something in Italian to the man, who said, “ La serre, ” and jabbed his finger toward the side of the château.
    Korvel reached down to help the girl to her feet, but with one fluid movement she stood and brushed past him, running in the direction the man had indicated. “Sister, wait.”
    The nun didn’t look back.
    “Damn me.” He drove his boot into the wounded man’s temple, knocking him out, and then started after the girl.
    The tangle of shrubbery and hedges crowding the grounds formed an impromptu yet effective labyrinth, forcing Korvel to track the nun by her scent. That led him to the open door of an enormous glass greenhouse behind the château.
    Broken glass crunched under his boots as he stepped inside. The men had left the place in ruins; what they