Nightbound Read Online Free PDF

strangers were capable of. “I’m sorry, but I have to go now. It was nice to meet you. Good-bye.”

     
    Beaumaris knew some humans were born with the natural ability to resist
l’attrait
, the scent produced by the Kyn that allowed them to influence and control mortals. A few were even immune to it, but those mortals were so rare that he had never before personally encountered one.
    Until now.
    He watched Alys as she retreated into the lobby, her limbs easy in her loose khaki garments, a thick bunch of her fiery hair bobbing from where she’d pulled it through the back of her cap. She intercepted a porter to speak with him before moving onto the elevators. Not once did she glance back at him again.
    To her I am nothing more than a human male in a bar.
    Beau had not bothered with mortal females for so long that the annoyance he now felt with this one gave him pause. Like all Kyn, he had indulged himself with human women from time to time, enjoying their welcoming warmth and the fragile sweetness of their passions. None had ever touched his heart, however, and over the centuries the lovers he had taken had become an endless procession of willing lips and caressing hands, the blur of their features fading from his memory even as he slipped out of their beds.
    Alys.
Even her name intrigued him.
    This cheeky wench had been neither willing nor welcoming; perhaps that was what rendered her so singular. Her taste in clothing was nothing short of appalling, buteven her wretchedly fitted garments could not disguise her charms. Tall and slender as a yearling filly, Alys had been graced with skin like sunlit snow, the eyes of a fawn, and the mouth of an enchantress.
    Save for that startled look she had given him when he’d first spoken to her, she’d also shown as much interest in him as she might a potted plant.
    Testing the depth of her resistance would please him to no end, but Beau had to find Stuart. Once she had disappeared from view, he began making his way along the bar. None of the men answered to the name or knew the man he sought. Exasperated, Beau went to the reception desk, and compelled the clerk to give him a key card to Stuart’s room on the seventh floor.
    From outside the door to Stuart’s room he heard the sound of the shower, and let himself in. He didn’t interrupt the mortal’s bath, but used the time to inspect the man’s cases. He carried no weapons, but had filled one case with electronic gadgetry, and a second with large, old books. Beau opened one volume to read the title page, but the words were beyond his understanding.
    He tossed the book back into the case, infuriated with his own anger. As a mortal he had been taught to fight, not read; in his immortal life shame had compelled him to hide his ignorance from the other Kyn. When the Realm had nearly fallen to Byrne’s bastard half brother and his Saracen conspirators, Beau had realized that his own, long-kept secrets could be revealed someday. A week after Jayr had been named suzeraina, Beau had gone into the city to seek a solution.
    He soon learned that anyone could enroll in a literacy class at one of the public libraries; the mortals whotaught them were volunteers who required no payment in return. Even better, most were held after sunset, to benefit those who were obligated to work during the day.
    His first teacher, a retired librarian with seeming endless patience, had prevented him from giving up several times that first month. “Reading is like learning another language,” Mrs. Decker would say. “You can’t expect to be fluent from the start. You must learn, and practice what you learn.”
    As Darkyn, Beau knew himself to be superior to mortals in almost every way; as a reader he discovered he was painfully slow, and made many mistakes. Mrs. Decker began asking him to stay behind after the class was dismissed to work with her for another half hour.
    “You’re fighting this too much, my dear,” she’d told him after he’d