Read Lynn Viehl - [Darkyn 08 - Lords of the Darkyn 01] for Free Online Page A

several minutes, intent on discovering the source of the smoke, but heard and smelled nothing out of the ordinary. The local farmers would have lit their fireplaces, he decided, to dispense some of the morning chill from their homes. With the high price of heating oil and coal, and France’s perpetually dismal economy, it made sense that they would burn wood.
    He knew why every little thing was setting him on edge. He had entered territory unfamiliar to him—a strategic disadvantage he always attempted to avoid. While the Darkyn no longer actively occupied southern France, centuries of respecting the boundaries between immortal strongholds had become a matter of form for his kind. Thus traveling into strange lands made every Kyn warrior uneasy. That, and without his sword Korvel felt almost naked. But he knew he could bespell any mortal who saw him before they could expose his presence—
    The smell of hot, sweet, smoky tea grew stronger, distracting him from his thoughts, and he realized a faint opaque haze was now visible in the air. A lightning strike might have set some of the woods ablaze, but then the birds and the other creatures inhabiting it would be making a racket. All he heard was birdsong and the flutter of leaves in a breeze.
    A breeze that felt a few degrees warmer than it had by the main road.
    Korvel eyed the nearest sturdy tree, measuring the width of its branches before he went to it and jumped up to catch the lowest bough. He boosted himself up easily and began to climb in search of a better vantage point. Forty feet from the ground the branches began to thin, and another ten feet higher a gap from a broken limb afforded him a view of the surrounding hills.
    Frost had begun to kill the grazing grasses, leaving behind wide, irregular brown patches on the gentle slopes like some giant’s muddy, erratic footprints. From his position he could see a stretch of road leading up to a high stone wall and iron gates; beyond them shrubbery and shorter trees masked the grounds around a large structure with a tiered roof of gray slate shingles. Steady streams of white smoke poured from the slate roof’s three chimneys.
    It had to be Château Niege. It seemed Helada’s mortal servants also disliked the cold October mornings.
    Feeling once more like a fool, Korvel stepped off the branch and dropped to the ground. Once he had the scroll, he would go to the nearest city and take his rest there until nightfall. Then, when he rose, he would find a willing female and feed. Perhaps he would fuck her, too, and relieve his other, long-denied needs. Sex had never been a particular pleasure for him, not when he could have any woman just by willing it, but he had let too much time pass. He could no longer remember the last time he’d taken a female to his bed.
    He knew he had not touched any female in an intimate fashion since his master had abducted Alexandra Keller and put the American doctor in Korvel’s care. Another painful indicator that it was high time he dispensed with the last dregs of his idiotic adolescent obsession.
    Korvel picked up his pace and in a few minutes arrived at the gates of the château. The guardhouse stood empty, and the gates had been opened. Fresh tire marks left twin tracks in the dirt before disappearing on the concrete slab of the drive.
    The unmistakable reek of mortal blood made Korvel halt and draw in the smoke-fogged air. A trace of the wet-scarlet bloom came from inside the gates, but a stronger source was much closer. He shrugged out of his coat, letting it drop to the ground as he spun around to face whatever had crept up behind him.
    Two mortals dressed in military fatigues and black cloth masks stood silently watching him. Both held combat blades in their hands and carried handheld radios. The automatic weapons slung over their shoulders had not been fired, but the dark red spatter on their uniforms was still wet.
    Korvel felt a crowding sensation as more men emerged from the tree