The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)(10)

Louder and louder it grew, screaming at him incessantly until one day, a memory surged forward. A memory of one of the many fireside stories he’d heard, passed down from generation to generation of Gypsies, a history of the clans, of the most powerful Roma…



“Centuries ago a boy was born, the eldest son to the baró of the Drágon clan. He was a powerful Rom, blessed by nature with all the magical elements. Back then, Romani were not welcome in the Gaje world, and they had to travel many miles in hiding. This particular clan had settled peacefully, deep within the Carpathian Mountains, far away from the towns and villages that had condemned them.

“But they were not alone in the mountains. Unknown to the Roma, a Gaje lord with a hunger for power lived among them, watching and waiting until one day, in an attempt to learn the secrets of their magic, he attacked. The baró’s two sons, who’d been away from camp, returned home to find their entire clan slaughtered. It is said that the lord had spared no one his brutality, not even the children.

“Mad with revenge, the eldest son had walked for days, thinking only of the vengeance he would exact on his enemies. His body grew gaunt, his clothes torn, but still he walked. Upon his arrival at the lord’s castle, the guardsmen had laughed at the solitary Gypsy who’d thought to take on an entire fortress of armed men. They laughed until they’d looked into his eyes and instead of a man, they saw bottomless pits of black despair. The baró’s son, the most powerful of all the Roma, had called upon dark magic to seek his revenge. No man, woman, or child who crossed his path that day was safe from his madness.”

But it wasn’t the “why” that Shandor was concerned with, it was what had happened as a result of it.

“In this life,” the story went on, “nothing is given freely. There are consequences to every action. For cutting short the lives of hundreds of innocent people, the baró’s son was condemned to live out the lives he’d taken, and the lives of their unborn children, and their unborn children, in a never-ending cycle, filled with eternal pain and shrouded in darkness. In return for his bloodlust, he would always hunger for blood, never knowing peace or life without suffering. They say from that day forward he never left the fortress, and that anyone who dared to venture into those mountains was never heard from again. Mullo was the name given to him. It means ‘the first vampire.’”

Suddenly, it had all made sense.

The end of the world. The bloodlust, and an eternal life full of suffering.

The story of Mullo was true.

Mullo had called upon dark magic and reaped the consequences, becoming the first vampire. Once realizing that the legend wasn’t just a legend but an accurate account of history, Shandor had looked down at his talon-tipped fingers, and for the first time understood what had happened to him.

Vampirism was real, just a little different than everyone had always thought. But why would a world full of nonbelievers think magic had anything to do with anything? The Gaje had very little faith left; they believed in only what they could see, touch, and taste. Their world was reduced to equations and definitions; everyone needed substantial proof or they deemed it impossible.

But the impossible had happened, and it had happened because of magic.

This revelation also explained why Shandor’s power had shifted. Having had magic before his transformation, not only was he now a darker version of himself, but so was his power. What he still couldn’t figure out was the whole he-still-had-a-soul thing, why he still felt guilt over his actions and why he could better control himself than any other Skin he’d encountered. None of the Skins he’d come across had retained their souls. Their auras were as black as death itself, proving them soulless, and leaving Shandor to further believe that this could only be the result of dark magic.

Both humans and animals had souls. While an animal’s soul was simple, a human’s soul was colorful and complex, full of emotions and feelings, desires and dreams. Comparing the two was like comparing a circle to a decagon; the comparison could be made because both actually had a soul.

Skins had nothing. Nothing but icy, black emptiness.

So, why had he retained some of what he used to be? Was it the light magic that had once been inside him that had kept him tethered to his humanity?



Shandor went still on his perch as a cool hand wrapped around his throat, and sharp claws pierced the skin on his neck.

“Are you alone?” a throaty feminine voice whispered.

“Yes,” he hissed, pissed off that he’d been spotted, and furious that he hadn’t even realized it.

When the hand released him, he spun on the branch he’d been perched upon and froze again.

Crouched in front of him—her eyes red, her bloody fangs bared, her claws ready to rip into him—was a naked female Skin. Her long black hair was ratty and snarled, covered in bits of leaves and caked with mud, and her olive skin was smudged with dried blood and dirt.

She was by far the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Fuck me,” he whispered, looking his fill of her lithe, muscular body.

She cocked her head to one side, her lips curving in amusement. “So sure of yourself.”

She laughed, a throat-purring sound, and his body hardened. “Fat?, you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“I already know you’re a narcissistic *.”