The Lost Souls Read Online Free PDF

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 fucking 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.
    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