The Lost Souls Read Online Free PDF Page A

last seen Trinity, hoping like hell she was still alive and holed up somewhere nearby. He’d tell her what he had done, that he’d lied out of spite and jealousy, and then he’d bring her home to Xan, to the clan. And maybe, just maybe, Nadya would want him again as a result.
    A t least, that had been the plan. A snowstorm the likes of which he’d never seen, and he’d seen a lot, had thrown him off course. Now he was running on empty in the middle of nowhere in the midst of a blizzard.
    The first farmhouse Marko came across, he didn’t bother looking for a driveway. He just threw the truck into four-wheel drive and headed straight across the lawn. Parking his truck and trailer directly in front of the house, he tied a scarf around his face, grabbed his backpack, and left the warmth of the truck.
    It was slow going, fighting the biting wind and flurries as he made his way to the house. Luckily he found the front door unlocked and hurried inside. The house wasn’t any warmer than outside, not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be sleeping in it.
    A few months back while preparing for the coming winter, he’d altered his trailer, as had most of his clan, and installed a wood-burning stove. It wasn’t an easy job. First, he’d had to rip out the entire kitchen unit and, using bricks and sheet metal, built a fireproof area. Once that had been completed, he’d taken a saw and cut a rectangular hole in the ceiling of the trailer. Using more sheet metal , he finished off the entire project by creating a flame-resistant chimney area.
    Before he left camp in Ohio, Marko had taken a shit ton of firewood, and had since been collecting anything he could find. Didn’t matter what it was as long as he could eat it, drink it, or burn it.
    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 fucking 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