My Soul To Take (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

While exploring the next morning, I found a cluster of camping cabins located close to the lake. There was no road through this part of the park and the cabins were heavily concealed by the forest.

“Maybe,” I told the stack of Skin Eater bones I had carried with me. “We can hole up here for the winter. How would you feel about that?”

Burying the element infused bones in a large circle around the cabins and a large portion of the forest, I created an even stronger circle of protection. Bones, after infused with spirit, could absolutely not be moved. You couldn’t dig them up, you couldn’t break them. The fifth element, once summoned into osseous matter, stuck like super glue, fossilizing the magic inside. Why exactly, I wasn’t sure, maybe death just likes death. The only problem with using spirit to create wards was you could never remove them. The last thing I wanted to do was leave a magical trail of death in my wake.

I was painfully aware that I lacked understanding of all things
magic. Xan had given me the basics about both light and dark magic, but at the time, I had never thought to ask about either in depth, never actually expecting to become a bearer of either. Everything I’d learned I discovered either by accident or through my own trial and error. I knew there had to be more, much more, and I knew the knowledge was inside me. I could feel the untouched energy radiating out from my power core. Sadly, it would remain that way.

The cabin I picked for my own felt like a palace compared to the tiny trailer I had lived in at camp. It looked like an authentic log cabin from the outside, but it was an illusion. The logs had been split down the center, the inside had been varnished and the windows were modern, double paned with secure locks. In the living room, there was a working wood-burning stove, a large stack of firewood next to it, a rickety table with four ladder-back chairs, and a futon doubling as a couch. A small kitchenette was built-in at the very end of the room.

To the left of the kitchenette and down a small hallway, a bathroom boasted a bathtub, toilet, and sink, not that I would be using them, but I was happy for the vanity mirror. I would no longer have to walk around unaware that I had leaves in my hair and mud on my face.

The bedroom at the end of the hall was a delightful surprise, consisting of a small dresser, a bedside table, and a double bed. The thin, stained mattress that sat alone on a basic metal frame was the most beautiful sight I had seen in a long time.

I laughed aloud and spun around with my arms spread wide. I’d hit the jackpot. I’d found a home far enough away from any sort of compact civilization. I was heavily warded. There was a gods damn lake in my front yard and plenty of wandering animals to hunt. And I had a Jeep! What else could an apocalypse survivor ask for? Companionship, you say? These days a girl can’t be too fussy. I would settle for survival instead and put the rest out of my mind.

Maybe I should start fishing? First, I would need a fishing pole. Damn, I didn’t even know how to use a fishing pole.

I should probably stop talking to myself. No need to end up watching a blank television screen. Although, if I drew faces on it…

I spent the rest of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon cleaning out the dust and bugs and moving my own meager belongings inside. My food supply was low, not that I minded hunting, but I wanted to stock up on canned goods for winter. A storm could blow in, trapping me inside. I needed to be prepared for anything.

This meant collecting enough firewood to last the winter, something I had not the first clue how to accomplish. None of the new skills I boasted included axe wielding.

It also meant I had to raid again. I hated raiding. I hated going anywhere near towns or cities. They were dangerous, full of starving and terrified humans, and packs of intelligent Skin Eaters just waiting to take me down. I might be Ms. Magic now, but that didn’t mean I was impervious to a horde of sharp-toothed cannibals trying to tear out my throat or half-crazed humans imbedding bullets in my vital organs. I had been lucky on my venture into Pittsburg. Very lucky.

I surveyed my new, clean home, exhausted but happy. I was toasty warm from the fire I had started, and full from the meal I had eaten. I laid my sleeping bag over top of the bed, rolled up my hooded sweatshirt for a pillow and delighted in the fact that for the first time in a long time I didn't have to sleep with one eye open.

Things were really looking up. Fingers crossed. But just to be sure, I sent up a quick prayer to the Goddess Tyche and asked her not to forsake me. A girl couldn’t be too careful.

Convinced I had covered all my avenues, I slept. Like the dead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Xan slung his axe through another log. He probably shouldn’t be chopping wood when he was shitfaced drunk, but hey, what did he care if he chopped his leg in half? Maybe he would bleed out and then all his problems would be solved. Invigorated by that very idea, he hauled another log up on the tree stump and swung twice as hard as usual. The wood cracked, split, and fell off the sides. No leg chopping. Of course not. Why would God let him die when it was much more fun to watch him suffer?

Tempting fate, he pulled out his flask and gulped half the contents down in one swallow. Ah. Liquid fire.

“Hey baby,” Fifi purred, sidling up to him and bumping her hip into his thigh.

“What’s up?”

She grinned. “You, hopefully…” She slid her hand down the front of his pants and grabbed him.

He eyed her sideways. “What are you doing?”

She huffed, snatching her hand back. “Nicu is poking around me.”

He made a face. “What? He can’t be that stupid.”

She put her tiny hands on her slight hips. “He is! He knows you’re not with me anymore! You should hear all the disgusting things he’s been saying to me!”

Fucking hell. “I’ll talk to him,” he muttered.

“It’s not going to work, Xan.”

He slung the axe down, imbedded it into the stump, and rolled his shoulders.

“Why not?”

“You know why! Everyone knows we are not together anymore! If he claims me, despite what you say, he has a valid excuse to keep me and you know it! People need to see us together again!”

He exhaled noisily. “Fine. Come on.”

Hand in hand, they walked purposely through the majority of camp before heading to his trailer. When Fifi was standing on the top step, he pushed her back up against the door.

“Are there enough people around for you?”

Instead of answering, she wrapped her arms around his neck and shoved her tongue in his mouth. He stiffened. He didn't want to do this and yet...he was. His body was unwillingly responding to her despite the screaming protests of his conscience.

“Take me inside,” she breathed. “Now.”

He shook his head. “I can't. Not with you. Not when I'd be thinking about
her
.”

And he would be thinking about her. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since the day he’d met her.

“I don’t care,” she begged. “Think about her all you want! I don't know how it feels to lose the person you’re in love with, but I am just as lonely as you are, Xan. I'm only human. I need to feel something once in a while, too. And I trust you; you're my best friend and the only man I’ve ever trusted with my body.”

He, too, was only human and when a beautiful girl is grinding herself on you, begging to be fucked…

They fell through the door in a tangle of limbs, tearing at each other’s clothes. Once naked, she straddled him and eagerly took him inside of her. They both froze on contact.

Ah, yes. She could feel it, too.

Years and years of being together intimately, of knowing each other inside and out and there was nothing there, not anymore. Touching her felt empty. Just like everything else in his life, sex felt monotonous now. Two bodies using each other for an empty release. It meant nothing. Not without
her
.

Gripping Fifi’s hips, he closed his eyes and pictured her. Pictured the last time he had been inside of her – the morning before he’d left on that fateful raid.

Her head was thrown back, her eyes were squeezed shut, and she was biting her bottom lip, panting breathlessly, as she rode him hard.

“Come on, Xan,” she breathed, “Come with me.”

No. Way. He wanted to hold out as long as he could. In awe, he watched her come, screaming his name and shuddering astride him. She collapsed forward, nose to nose, and opened those bright green eyes of hers. She smiled shyly, her cheeks pink; embarrassed that she’d so completely come apart in front of him.

And that was all it took. With the knowledge that he affected her every bit as much as she affected him, he fell to pieces beneath her, knowing there was nowhere else he’d ever want to be but inside of her.

Recovering from his release, his satiation quickly faded. Soon he would have to open his eyes and it would not be her he’d find sprawled across his chest.
Her
wouldn't be anywhere. Her was gone.

“Xan?” Fifi’s fingers trailed down his cheek. “Are you okay, baby?”

Fuck, no. He didn’t want to hear Fifi's voice; he wanted to pretend for just a moment longer.

“Go away,” he said hoarsely.

When the door shut softly behind her, still on the floor, he rolled to his side and smiled at the beautiful woman lying naked next to him.

She gave him a wide, sexy smile. “Hey,” she said softly.

He grinned. “Hey yourself.”

CHAPTER NINE

A few days after arriving, I left the park in search of food and supplies. I was determined to fill my Jeep with as much as possible. Using my new map, I came across a decent-sized community with a good number of shops.

“Jackpot,” I whispered, grabbing all five boxes of tampons on the only shelf still standing. Thank the gods for Aunt Marjorie’s General Store. Though there was little food to be found inside, I was able to dig up several bars of soap in the rubble and enough toothbrushes and toothpaste to last a century.

Traveling deeper into town, I managed to find a good amount of supplies in nearby homes. Most of the houses had pantries full of non-perishables that contained a few pleasant surprises, canned pickles and homemade jam in almost every flavor. It was too bad I didn’t have bread, but whatever. Jam on my finger, or on the crackers I’d found, was fine with me.

While exploring the upstairs of a two-story farmhouse, I came across the bedroom of a teenage girl. Dark purple walls, band posters and cheerleading pompoms. The mirror above her dresser was lined with photos of school dances and self-taken shots of her and her girlfriends. A tiny tiara and a pink sash that read “Homecoming Queen” hung over her headboard. Her vanity was covered in makeup, perfume, and every possible color of nail polish. Unfinished math homework was scattered across her purple comforter, beside a pink Dell laptop.

Her small closet was heavily packed with cutesy tops and pretty dresses, the shelf above it stocked full of shoeboxes and designer purses. I immersed myself in the soft, colorful fabrics, ran my fingers through them, and imagined how they would look on me.

I picked out several things before sighing and putting them all back. Pretty clothes were useless to me now. I had no one to dress up for and they certainly were not practical. The only items I ended up taking from her bedroom were a pair of black yoga pants, a PINK tee shirt, a light purple hooded sweatshirt, every pair of underwear she had, and a pair of dark brown Uggs. On a whim, I grabbed a stack of her books, all teenage romance novels, and a barely used purple diary. On the inside cover, written in purple cursive was “Property of Kaitlyn Macpherson”.

I shoved it all inside a Hello Kitty shoulder bag I had pulled from the closet and moved on to the master bedroom. Her father’s clothing was exactly what I had been looking for. I snagged thick cotton socks, fleece-lined flannel shirts, warm sweat pants, a heavy winter coat, scarves, gloves, and even a ski mask.

Before I left, I stopped back in Kaitlyn's room and grabbed two bottles of purple nail polish. If I were going to be wearing pink flip-flops next summer, I would do it with purple toenails.

As I stepped off the wraparound porch, a pack of dogs, that at one point had probably been house trained, darted out from behind the garage. They spotted me immediately and slunk forward, teeth bared, ears flattened, and snarling like the fearsome hound of Hades,
Cerberus
.

Judging by their exposed ribcages, they were obviously starving. I pulled my gun from the back of my jeans, crouched and aimed for the biggest one, a fat-faced pit bull. With a shot to his head, he went down. Aware of the sudden danger, the others skittered backwards.

The seven remaining dogs sniffed at their dead friend, all except one, a large golden retriever that had seen better days. His limp made him slower than the others. An infection had set inside his leg and gangrene was quickly eating up the skin and muscle around the wound. I let another bullet fly and took him out.

“Eat up boys,” I cooed to the dogs as I skirted around them. “Best meal you'll find around here.”

A few hours later, I was parked in front of a hospital, putting a fresh clip in my gun.

The sliding emergency room doors were frozen open and I had to push several bloody gurneys out of my way in order to enter. I was barely through the entrance when the strong, rancid stench of decay hit me hard.

The entire place was a putrid mess. The blood-splattered waiting area was a place of nightmares. A half-rotted body of some poor nurse still wearing her pink scrubs hung haphazardly over the top of the check-in desk. On the floor, in the midst of toppled over chairs and small tables, were more human remains.

Rats scurried out of my way as I pushed through a doorway labeled “Exam Rooms”, hoping to find a sign that would lead me to the cafeteria.

The darkness of the hospital engulfed me. Without windows, the corridors were eerily shadowed. Summoning
fire to my left hand, my gun clutched in my right, I continued down the hallway, zigzagging my way through broken and bloodied hospital equipment.

Just as I was about to make a left, I heard small whimpers coming from behind a closed door.

Carefully, I pushed the lever down and slowly stepped inside the room. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight streaming in from the windows, but when they did, I was unable to contain the shudder of horror that tore through me.

A child, no more than five or six, had been placed in a straightjacket and shackled to a hospital bed by his neck and feet, presumably before he had turned into a Skin Eater. No human would have been able to bind a Skin Eater; we simply were not strong enough.

And it was obvious that this particular Skin Eater had not fed. His skin was a sickly shade of gray that sagged off his bones, his eyes sunken in and lined with dark circles, giving him a skeletal appearance.

The moment he spotted me, he turned feral. Snarling, snapping, and pulling so hard against the chain around his neck that his skin began to tear.

I had seen a lot in the past months on my own. I had seen things that had kept me awake at night, unable to close my eyes without reliving the experience all over again. However, never had I seen a child Skin Eater. I had figured, since they were small and could be eaten quickly, there would be nothing left of them to turn.

Yet, here one was. Someone, more than likely his parents, had brought him here, probably to receive medical attention after he had been bitten. But, if he had been here since the devastation had begun and had not eaten at all, how, I wondered, was he still alive?

He let loose a bloodcurdling scream and thrashed violently within the confines of the jacket. The bed he was on tipped back and forth, threatening to fall over.

“It hurts!” he screamed shrilly, tears pouring down his tiny face.

Extinguishing my fire, I approached him with only my gun. Red, wild eyes bored into me. His features tightened and his lips peeled back in a snarl exposing a full set of horrifyingly sharp teeth.

I aimed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. Wide, red eyes turned brown and lifeless as he slumped down in his bed.

After freeing his little body from the restraints, I wrapped him up in his sheets and tucked him into bed. It was the least I could do.

When I had finished, I sunk to the floor beside him and cried. I had just killed a child.

A child.

A little boy who would never have the chance to live. How could this be my life now? I kept waiting to wake up from this nightmare I’d been living in but I never did. And looking up at the little boy I had just killed, I knew I never would.

******

I continued my search for food, following the cafeteria directional signs until a familiar sound brought me up short. From around the bend, horrible slurping and popping noises filled an otherwise silent hall. I recognized it for what it was immediately; the sound of a Skin Eater enjoying its meal is unmistakable.

Poking my head around the corner I saw a lone male Skin Eater sitting on his knees, tearing apart the insides of what I think had once been a cat.

Tucking my gun in the back of my jeans, I summoned
fire to my hands and stepped into his line of sight.

His red eyes picked me up immediately. What remained of the cat fell to the floor.

“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Better now that you’re here,” he growled, grinning at me.

“I aim to please,” I told him, spreading my arms wide, readying.

If he had even noticed the fact that my hands were on fire, he obviously did not care. With another growl, he leapt into the air, sharp talons poised and ready to tear into me.

The flames I threw wrapped around him and he fell to the floor with a thud, deader than dead.

“How did you idiots take over the entire world so quickly?” I mused aloud.

“He was an idiot,” a male voice agreed. “But I’m not.”

I spun around, only to find myself thrown up against the nearest wall. The Skin Eater quickly shifted from his choking grip on my neck to pinning my hands flat against the wall behind me. His body pressed painfully against my own as he bared his fangs at me in the semblance of a grin.

“You see,” he said, a smug look on his face. “Not an idiot.”

Fear like I hadn’t felt in quite awhile took hold, freezing me in shock. Without my hands I couldn’t fight him, I was about as powerless as any normal human when faced with these monsters, which was not at all.

Still gripping my wrists, he leaned in, mouth wide open and ready to take a bite out of my neck.

I had fought for survival for months now, alone. I’d scavenged for food, stolen numerous vehicles, fought herds of Skin Eaters, and even had to kill a fellow human just to make it through another day...only to have it all end in some small hospital in some small town with no one around to know.

My scream began deep in my belly, it bubbled up through my chest, and with all the air left in my lungs it exploded up past my throat and out into the air.

The Skin Eater blew backwards, smashed through the wall, and fell screaming to his death. Windows burst outward in a spray of glass, the floor began to tremble, and plaster rained down around me.

I cried out in horror as I realized the Skin Eaters hands were still gripping my wrists. Jumping and screaming, I frantically shook my arms, dislodging them.

A loud crash sounded down the hallway and I spun around and stared at the gaping ceiling and the toilet that had fallen through it. The building continued to shake, more cracks appeared in the floor, and soon the hallway began to split in two. I jumped to my right, just as tile beneath me gave way. I raced down the hallway as ceiling tiles fell from above and steel support beams came crashing through the crumbling walls around me.

As I ran through the dark hallways, turning right and left, the building suddenly let out a thunderous groan, and tilted to the right. I slid sideways, hitting the wall. Blinding dust billowed from the deteriorating structure, causing me to trip over what I could not see. Scrambling to my feet, I half-hopped, half-crawled my way towards the light of the emergency room exit.

I had just breached the sliding doors when, with another groan, the exterior of the hospital began to crumble. Bricks poured out from underneath each other in a waterfall of destruction.

Terrified, I tore through the parking lot; I had just rounded an abandoned ambulance when I crashed to a stop and fell backwards onto the hard cement.

Confused, I squinted up into the sun and found myself looking into the stunned face of Marko Siwak.

“Oh...fuck,” he whispered.

Shrieking, I jumped to my feet and grabbed his arms. “Oh my gods! Where’s Xan? Is he with you? Is he okay?” I asked, looking around wildly.

Gods, had I finally found him? He had never missed a raid. The thought that he could be close by sent my heart racing. The past few months suddenly meant nothing, had been a small price to pay, if it meant I would be with him again.

“I’m sorry, Trinity,” Marko said.

I stared at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, you’re sorry? Is he okay?”

Oh please, please, please, let him be okay!

“Xan is fine,” Marko said. “But…”

“But what?”

“He’s moved on,” he said quickly and averted his eyes.

I stared at him. “Excuse me? Moved on…to somewhere else? As in, he left the clan?”

Maybe I could still find him, if Marko told me what direction he had gone.

“No,” Marko replied firmly. “He’s moved on to another woman. Several other women, actually.”

I released his arms and took a quick step backwards.

How could he? It has only been…a few months! How could he do that to me?

“What other women?” I demanded. “Fifi? Is he back with Fifi?”

“Go back to Gerik,” Marko said gently. “Forget about Xan.”

He glanced over at the decimated hospital. “And tell frate to start teaching you some self-control before you end up killing yourself.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’ll be sure to tell him that if I ever see him again.”

His eyes went wide. “He’s not with you?”

“No,” I said bitterly. “He dumped me in the woods near camp and never came back.”

Looking uncertain, Marko looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “But it doesn’t change anything. You’re dark now and we can’t have you inside of camp.”

Without another word, I turned on my heel and walked off.

“What the fuck?” someone shouted. I glanced over my shoulder and found Tobar Popa and Marko locked in battle, shouting at each other in Romanian. Ignoring them, I walked quickly back to my Jeep.