My Soul To Take Read Free Page A

sacrificed yourself for your friends and family. Nice, huh?
    Then, in what I am convinced was the final act of a desperate man, Gerik grabbed me and fled camp. Using his power, he completed the joining of our soul, and left me with half his magic. Literally left me. I’d come to consciousness alone and haven’t seen him since.
    When I had returned to camp, I found it deserted. The clan had left me as well. Initially, I had searched fruitlessly for them. However, as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, alone and desperate, I’d eventually found myself caring less and less about finding them. My main focus was surviving. Anything less, any sort of distraction, would result in my death. And my death was simply unacceptable.

CHAPTER TWO
    Xan blinked back sleep. Stretching, getting a ripe whiff of his body odor, he grimaced. Eh, he never claimed to be a hygiene freak. Leaning out of bed, he grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor of his trailer and fumbled through his pockets.
    Lighting a cigarette, he stretched back out in bed, took a few drags and then grabbed the bottle of bathtub gin he had been reduced to drinking and making; not actually in a bathtub but close enough. The last several raids he had gone on had not produced much of anything. Booze was scarce…a hot commodity during the end of days.
    Where the hell was he anyway? Somewhere in Pennsylvania? He had stopped paying attention. He had stopped doing a lot of things, aside from existing. Not that anyone cared anyway about anything anymore.
    So many clan members of Clan Popa were dead and gone. His mamă was dead; killed by a Skin Eater that had hitched a ride on the back of her RV. Jericho Popa, the clan Baró, was dead; died of old age in his sleep about a month ago. Lucky bastard. In his stea d was his only progeny, his grandson, Tobar. Tobar was a shitty Baró, in a shitty world, and everything was falling apart.
    Barós were leaders, law enforcers, and part judge and part jury. Romani law had been built purposely around the Gaje law to ensure that their worlds collided as little as possible and to make certain the Gypsies no longer faced adversity and prejudices. Safety and clan continuation were everything to the Romani.
    What everyone had failed to realize is that without the Gaje world and the Gaje laws, their laws meant nothing. They had been a race of people hellbent on survival in the worst possible odds since the very beginning. Life skills were passed down from generation to generation, so yeah, they could survive an apocalypse, but what they could not survive was anarchy, not amongst themselves.
    The Gaje world was in ruins, the remaining humans lived as they pleased, violent, greedy and afraid, as they fought their inevitable extinction. The Romani had done their best to keep their clan together but the odds kept stacking up against them, one death after another. The Gaje’s anarchy was trickling into camp, one Roma at a time. Nothing lasts forever, he supposed.
    He took a long swallow of gin and started choking. Not good. Nevertheless, it got the job done and he planned on working overtime today.
    Knocking open the window near his head, he flicked out his cigarette, closed the window and lit up another. He took another couple of swallows, shook off the burn, recapped the bottle and tossed it on the floor. He finished his cigarette and not wanting to let more cool air in, he instead stubbed it out on the counter. He would clean it up later.
    Right.
    Because he cleaned so much lately. His trailer floor was carpeted in dirty clothes and muddy boots. His sink was piled high with dirty dishes, his counter littered with empty cigarette packs, rolling papers, loose tobacco and bottles.
    Yeah, he really didn’t care. His morning wood, however, he cared about.
    Turning to his side, he ran his hand over the body of the naked woman sleeping with her back to him. He slid down beside her and lifted her thigh. Positioning himself at her entrance, he