The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)(9)
Gypsies didn’t sleep cold.
And they certainly didn’t die just because Western civilization had. Fuck that.
Rubbing his gloved hands together, Marko looked around the basic home. It was a little more floral than most and a filthy mess, which meant it had probably been ransacked several times over. His last shred of hope dissolved. He wouldn’t find any gasoline here. If there had been any to begin with, it was definitely long gone by now.
Still, he never knew what he could find. Anything could be useful.
He started walking, kicking broken furniture out of his way, searching out the kitchen. Because it was winter and everything outside and inside was well past frozen, he didn’t have to worry about the smell, not that it smelled good by any means. It was just not nearly as overpowering as the putrefied stench of rot and decay brought about during the warmer months.
Ignoring the refrigerator, Marko headed straight for the cupboards and was greeted with the usual dead insects and rodents. After some digging, he managed to find a few things that hadn’t been pillaged by the vermin or ruined by the freeze. Once he’d secured his finds in his backpack, he made his way through the mess back to the living room, headed for the staircase. He needed clean clothing. Freezing temperatures weren’t conducive to washing anything, not that he knew how to do his own laundry. He’d always had women around for that. Yet another thing that sucked about leaving the clan.
He had his boot on the first stair when he heard the telltale sound of a door squeaking as it opened and a frigid breeze blew past him. Dropping his backpack, he pulled both his guns from his jeans and whirled around. A bundled-up figure, slight in stature and quaking from the cold, stood in the doorway.
“Don’t f*cking move,” Marko growled. “And open your goddamn mouth.”
? ? ?
Carrie was cold, so very cold, and hungry and terrified. She was out of firewood and out of food. She’d been living off melted snow and a box of stale macaroni noodles for the past week since the crazy bitch had killed her brother. She been rationing the noodles until two days ago when she’d had no choice but to eat the last one.
If she didn’t leave her house, she was going to die in it. And soon.
Her entire family, her entire town, was gone. It was the middle of the worst winter she’d ever seen, and she was starving to death.
“How is this my life?” she mumbled, wiping warm tears off her cold cheeks.
Packing a bag full of spare clothing and anything she could find that could be used as a weapon, Carrie pulled on layer upon layer of clothing, bundling herself against the blustery wind. Then, with a heavy heart, she stepped out into the storm and went south, toward her grandparents’ farm. It was her last hope, her last shot at finding food or gas, something, anything at all, because she didn’t want to die, and more importantly, she definitely didn’t want to die in Elderton.
“I will not die in Elderton,” she repeated over and over again as she battled through the bitter wind and driving snow.
It took the entire day and the very last of her energy, but she made it. Pushing open the familiar wooden fence and half-blinded by the sheer volume of snow, she staggered through the yard. Praying the door was unlocked, she gripped the handle and pushed.
She saw the guns first and the man holding them next.
“Don’t f*cking move,” he growled. “And open your goddamn mouth.”
Carrie tried. She gave it her all, but her skin was numb, half-frozen, and her limbs were weak, her body exhausted and malnourished. So instead of opening her mouth, her already blurry vision winked out, and she collapsed.
Chapter Six
From his snow-covered treetop perch, Shandor watched the group of Skins below, feasting on the family of deer they’d come across.
The deer he’d scented from miles away.
The deer he needed to soothe his own burning hunger.
He could kill the Skins, he supposed, and take their meal. He’d killed plenty of them before his transformation. He could kill them again.
Couldn’t he?
He’d been over this many, many times in his head, and every time before, the answer had been a resounding yes. But now, looking down at them, knowing what he now knew…
He couldn’t.
After his run-in with Trinity, Shandor had been unable to shake the melancholy that seeing her again had stirred to life. He’d spent several weeks shut inside a run-down barn, missing his family and his friends, missing Xan most of all, and wanting desperately to be human again instead of…
What the hell was he?
Several times back at his clan’s camp in the Catskills, he’d heard his baró, Jericho Popa, use the term vampir in regard to what he’d become. Was that what he was? A vampire?
Even as he’d thought it, he’d laughed. Remembering the modern Gaje obsession with the bloodsucking Don Juan types that had taken hold of pop culture and hadn’t let go, he’d found the very idea ridiculous. At least one thing was for certain—he was pretty sure any Gajes left alive weren’t swooning over vampires anymore.
Eventually he’d dismissed the possibility, feeling ridiculous for thinking it in the first place, but still he couldn’t seem to shake the word. It stuck within, always in the forefront of his mind, taunting him, teasing him, eating away at him.
Shandor tried tirelessly to poke holes in the theory, to disprove any validation he came up with, but the more he tried, the louder Jericho’s voice grew inside his head. Vampir. Vampir.