“This is true,” Maisera agreed.
“Then the decision is his,” Jericho said.
“I’ll go,” he answered immediately, refusing to look at me.
Shocked that Xan would give his decision so quickly, without talking it over with me first, tears sprung in my eyes. I was well aware that our camp couldn’t survive on our small vegetable gardens and the meager hunting found in the surrounding woods. Raids were a way of life now and we’d all accepted it. At least I’d thought I’d accepted it. Things change when you have something to lose.
“You’ve gone on every single one,” I accused Xan when the meeting had disbanded. “Every one. Even when you didn’t have to.”
“That’s something you can tell yourself when you’re worrying about me.” He lit up a cigarette, frowning at the inside of his pack. “That I’ve gone on every single one and I always came home.”
I was seething now. He was an arrogant, danger chasing, adrenaline junkie.
“Fată?” Xan asked, still frowning. “Did Tobar stop by today?”
“What?” I had to think about it for a minute. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Dammit!” he yelled. Jumping up, he stomped away, leaving me staring after him.
“Maybe it’s some sort of test,” Becki said, walking up behind me. “They force us to marry them and then they run away.”
I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, and they have spies watching us to see what we do while they’re gone.”
“We should go on a raid,” She suggested. “See how they feel about that.”
“Oh gods no!” I said, “I do not want to risk being tied up again!”
We both laughed. “Me either,” she agreed. “I’m still making him pay for that.” I raised an eyebrow in question and she blushed furiously. “You don’t want to know.”
Both eyebrows went up. Yep, I did.
Grinning, I patted the ground next to me. “Story time.”
******
Three days later, I could only stand there and watch helplessly as two pickup trucks and an empty supply van were removed from their parking spaces and loaded down with the necessary weapons and supplies needed for the raiding party.
“Fată.”
I half laughed, while choking back a sob when I saw Xan. A bulletproof vest was fastened over his thick clothing, and he was armed to the teeth. His hair was pulled back tightly making his sharp features even more predominant.
I shook my head. “Please don’t. Don’t say anything stupid right now. I don’t think I could handle it.” My stomach hurt, my chest hurt, and I was doing everything I could not to lose it.
He tugged me forward and kissed my forehead. “I’m coming back,” he said, slipping something cool and hard into the back of my jeans. “I’ll always come back to you.”
“Hey Romeo! Let’s go!” Half of Shandor’s body was hanging out of the passenger window of one of the trucks.
Xan gave me one last look. I’m sure he meant to convey reassurance, but all I could see was the excitement he was failing to hide from me. Running, in order catch up to the already moving vehicles, Xan grabbed on to the side of a truck bed and swung his body up and over.
When I could no longer see him, I pulled out the gun he’d slipped in my waistband and stared at it.
Trinity, Fata Mea.
“He had me engrave it for you.” Stefan put his arm around me, nodding at the gun.
“Said something about if it hadn’t been for guns...” He winked at me.
Fata Mea. My girl.
I rested my head on Stefan's chest and smiled. I could never stay mad at Xan for very long. Even if he was running through towns crawling with blood-sucking, flesh-eating monsters, while trying to steal enough supplies for an entire community of people.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hungary, 1078 A.C.E
Treime hated her husband’s mamă. She was going to kill the woman if she clicked her tongue at her one more time. Living with the Baró and his wife was a punishment worse than death, she’d decided.
This baby could not come soon enough, she thought, rubbing her belly. Feeling a small kick in response, she grinned. Her baby apparently agreed. No one liked Violca and really, who could blame them?
She couldn’t do anything right according to that woman. She couldn’t peel vegetables correctly, she couldn’t mend Emilian’s tunics’ or hose correctly and she couldn’t even grow her own child correctly!
“You’re too skinny for a woman with child!” Violca would scold. “You must eat more, rest more!”
And the absolute worst, “Relations between a man and woman is not good for the babe inside you,” Violca would tell her. “And don’t try to deny it! I can hear the two of you! Daily!”
How she would have loved to have told her that it was her son that had the insatiable appetite. That he couldn’t keep his hands off of her, big round belly or not, but she knew it would only further upset the infuriating woman.
Complaining to Emilian was out of the question. He was busy building their own wagon and gathering the supplies they would need to sustain themselves in their new home once the baby was born.
She couldn’t bring herself to bother him with her trivial nonsense, so she kept quiet, played the dutiful wife, satisfying Emilian’s hunger for her, and working hard to keep from killing his mamă.
But this morning she needed some time alone. Grabbing some raw carrots, she headed outside hoping to remain unseen until she could slip into the woods and head toward the warm springs. She nearly ran into Violca but managed to scurry quickly behind the neighbor’s horses, only to almost lose her breakfast at the fresh horse dung she’d stepped in.
Waiting for a few pounding heartbeats before peaking out behind the twitching tails, she glanced around. Nothing. But knowing Violca, she didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
Feeling like the only way to break loose was to make a run for it, she took a large breath, stepped out from behind the horses and ran directly into the giant belly of the clan blacksmith, Yanoro.
“Treime! Where are you off to, fată?”
“I need to go for a walk!” she hissed. “Alone!”
Yanoro laughed. The sound echoed across camp, making the horses whinny nervously. Yanora might be loud and imposing but he was sweeter than honey. He patted her belly. “You take care of that babe, Treime. I’ll take care of that woman for a minute or two so you can have some peace.”
Giving the blacksmith a grateful smile, she took off running.
“Violca!” she heard him yell. “I need some onions! For a…onion emergency!”
“Who lit a fire in your pants, Yanny?” Violca yelled back.
She giggled.
Finding a nice spot by the springs where the flowers grew colorful and plenty, she immediately pulled off her diklo and happily stretched out under the sun. It wasn’t long before she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the small waterfall nearby.
She awoke later to soft kisses on her cheeks, nose and forehead. Giggling, she pushed Emilian off of her.
“You have ladybugs all over you, love.” He picked up one of the tiny red and black bugs before it could fly away.
“It’s good luck, you know,” she told him, smiling. “What are you doing out here?”
“Walther and I are going hunting without the rest of the men.” He gestured to his little brother who was standing near the water and lowered his voice. “They tease him because he doesn’t like to harm the animals.”
Her heart swelled at the sweet admission and she smiled. “An admirable trait.”
Emilian grunted. “I’ll be back tonight, wife.” Then, once more, he kissed both her cheeks, lingered on her lips and lastly placed several more on her swollen belly.
Walther made a face at them.
Emilian helped her get to her feet and she tugged on Walther’s dark hair, thinking how similar to Emilian he looked. He wore his hair long like his brother and his eyes were the same dark brown. He would break h
earts too, Treime thought, already sad for the girls who wouldn’t get to keep the beautiful boy.
“Someday,Walther, you will be in love and you will understand,” she told him.
“Never,” He swore it with such ferocity that both Emilian and her burst out laughing. Walther’s scowl grew.
She watched them leave, feeling happy and lighthearted. She dallied near the springs, picking wildflowers and soaking her feet. On her way back to camp she heard a strange noise, something that sounded like drums, far off in the distance.
The closer she came to camp, the more recognizable the sound became, and it hadn’t been drums at all, but horses. Horse hooves, beating down upon the earth at a fast and furious pace. They sounded close.
She felt her stomach summersault. She knew who was coming.
The Gaje Man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Present Day
The sound of breaking glass and screaming woke me.
Hands trembling, I grabbed my gun from under my pillow and peeked out of my small window. At first I thought we’d been invaded by other humans who wanted to steal our supplies. The attackers were wearing clothing and not just a pair of torn, dirty pants. No. These Skin Eaters were fully dressed, much better than anyone at camp was, considering most of them had shoes on when we ourselves barely bothered.
And worse…they seemed almost…normal.
They weren’t constantly shifting like the other Skin Eaters I’d seen who seemed unable to stand still for too long. Their movements weren’t jerky or nervous or overly predatory. They were laughing and talking with one another instead of fighting.
I fell backwards across my bed as red eyes met mine through the glass.
“There’s another one in here!”
I never even had time to scream. They might have looked less like animals, but they still moved like their wild counterparts. My doors were torn off the hinges and I was grabbed and dragged outside my trailer before a scream had time to form.
“It’s fabulous!” someone yelled. “All this meat and blood! In one place no less!”
I was tossed onto the ground, face first in the dirt. Hands grabbed at me and my scream finally surfaced.
“No! Shh! Trinity, it’s me! It’s Becki!”
I scrambled up and wrapped my arms around her, just in time to see Lala’s shredded body thrown out of her trailer. Pitti howled an inhuman sound as he rushed toward his mother’s lifeless form. Two bodies blurred into existence beside him and took him down. I could hear his bones cracking from where we were huddled.
Gunshots and terrified screams sounded all around us.
“Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods,” I whispered, beginning to hyperventilate.
“Shhh. Trinity. You can’t freak out right now.” Becki cradled my head against her chest.
Freaking out would have been an understatement. They were stockpiling us. Eating some of us now and saving some of us for later.
“I want to fuck as I feast!” a male voice declared.
“You’re a pig,” a female answered.
“He’s a pig?” another voice said. “And what do you call eating six children in one sitting?”
Six children? The faces of Simza, of little Pali and Mala and tiny Benyamin flashed before me and then I was screaming, not out of fear, but pure fury.
“No!” Becki cried out as I got to my feet. “They’ll kill you!”
“They’re going to kill me anyway,” I told her. I pulled the gun from my waist band and ran at the female, shooting as I did. Three shots hit her in the chest and two in the head before I was taken down in a blur of speed. It didn’t matter. I’d killed her.
I wondered if there really was a utopia in the sky where my family would be waiting for me. I wondered if I’d see Xan there someday. Gods, I hoped so.
“Ahh, fetiță, you’re perfect for what I had in mind.” A cold hand ran down my side and over my buttocks, squeezing hard.
Grasping my arm he flipped me over, pinning me beneath him.
How human he looked surprised me. He was young, definitely younger than me, and very handsome. He had dark bronzed skin like Xan and long brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail. It was only when he smiled that the animal was revealed. His teeth were horrifying close up. Every tooth came to a sharp jagged point and his canines were still dripping with the blood of his last victim.
He brushed my hair away from my face and froze. Wide, red eyes turned brown.
With a roar he pushed me away from him. “This is not possible!” he yelled. “You are not possible!”
Not knowing what to do, I curled up into a ball and prayed.
It was several moments before he spoke again.
“Your eyes!” he yelled, coming closer. “Let me see your eyes!”
When he leaned over me, I opened my eyes as wide as could, praying to the gods that his face wasn’t going to be the last thing I ever saw.
“Treime?” he asked in a shaking voice. “Is it you?”
“Not hungry, Walther?” A shadow fell over us. A Skin Eater with wide shoulders and a shock of red hair was peering down at me. “I’ll take her off your hands.”
Walther hissed. Then with speed I couldn’t comprehend, he had me standing and positioned behind him.
“Easy man, why so touchy?”
“No one touches her!” Walther demanded.
“Are you going to change her?” The redhead surveyed my body in a way that made me feel violated, then grinned at me, flashing his own set of bloodied fangs. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
I took that moment to momentarily lose my mind.
“You psycho!” I screamed, struggling to shake loose of Walther. “You should all be put down like the animals you are!”
The redhead’s lips peeled back in a snarl and he lunged at me. Thankfully, Walther was faster and blocked him from reaching me. The two of them became nothing more than a blur of fists and kicks.
The battle ended nearly as soon as it had began, only the redhead was now minus his head.
Grabbing me by the arm, Walther dragged me across the bloody camp. The screams had waned, replaced now with sobbing. Which, I decided, was infinitely worse.
Wrenching open the Horváth’s trailer door, Walther threw me inside. I skidded across the linoleum floor until my back hit a short metal pole that secured a small table to the floor.
“You stay put until I come for you,” he said and left.
I immediately went for the window facing the edge of camp. There was no way I was going to sit in here until he came back to kill me. But the window wouldn’t open.
I was two seconds away from picking up a chair to bash through the glass when the ground began to shake so violently I was forced to position myself under the Horváth’s bedroom doorframe to keep from falling over. All throughout the trailer dishes and knick-knacks were toppling over and shattering. Clinging to whatever I could, I inched along the wall toward the bedroom’s largest window.
“Gerik,” I sighed in relief. I’d never before been so happy to see anyone.
Gerik stood strong and tall, magic pouring from his hands, blasting the hell out of anyone who came within several feet of him. And come at him they did. In twos and threes, from all sides. Hissing and growling, leaping and lunging. But Gerik was tuned in to all of his surroundings and not one of them got close enough to touch him as he easily blasted them backwards with enough force that audible cracks sounded as their bones broke.
Then Walther stepped forward, holding handfuls of black mist. “Magic,” I breathed, “The Skin Eater has magic.”
Real fear passed over Gerik’s features. Walther, in the same fashion one would throw a baseball, whipped both balls of wispy blackness straight at Gerik. As the mist whipped around his body, the ground stopped shaking and Gerik was brought trembling to his knees.
“No!” I screamed.
Still shaking, Gerik let loose two identical balls of flames in Walther’s direction. The flames caught and the Skin Ea
ter was instantly consumed by them. They disappeared just as quickly. His eyes were no longer red, nor brown, but black as death. There were no signs of burns, no injuries at all. If I had not seen it for myself I wouldn’t have believed that only moments ago he’d been set on fire. Unharmed, his march toward Gerik continued.
He threw another round of black mist at Gerik and he fell face first into the dirt. His body jerked hard once, twice and then stilled. Blood began pooling near his open mouth.
“Somebody help him!” I screamed, pounding on the window. “Help him!” I ran for the door, throwing it open and headed straight for Gerik.
Blood gushing from his nose and mouth, Gerik still managed to pull himself up. Shaking, he hit Walther again with fire. And again Walther erupted in flames which were instantly dissolved.
His laugh was the essence of evil. “You call yourself a Roma?” Walther taunted. “You are nothing! Nothing!” Walther blasted Gerik with another round of mist. Choking and gagging, Gerik grabbed his head and screamed as blood poured from his ears.
I kept on running.
“Trinity! No!” Jericho yelled.
Gerik’s head whipped around. “Djordji!” he roared. “Grab her!”
My presence seemed to solidify something in Gerik and he found the strength within to stand. Flames formed from his hands even faster than he could send them flying toward Walther.
Walther was having an increasingly harder time holding off the assault but he was still holding his own. With an incredible surge of black mist, he’d formed a shield of sorts, stopping the flames from reaching him. Then, reversing their direction with a flick of his wrist, he shot Gerik’s own fire back to him.
But Gerik was quicker. Using his magic he formed a miniature hurricane and sent it toward the flames. The hurricane quickly consumed all the fire and spun off in a different direction. New flames formed in his hands, larger and darker than before, yellow and orange with streaks of black.
Walther’s eyes went wide. Djordji’s hold on my arms went lax.
“Gerik!” Jericho screamed. “There is another way!”
“No,” he replied, his voice rough and garbled. “There isn’t.”