The Soul Mate

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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’s 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 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 drug 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 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 continued to sound all around us.

“Oh Gods. Oh Gods. Oh Gods,” I ranted, 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. There was one injury those monsters never survived; wounds to the brain.

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 fetita, 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.

Not knowing what to do, I curled up into a ball and prayed.

“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. And 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, then spit at him. “You should all be put down like the animals you are!”

The red head’s lips peeled back in a snarl and 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 begun, only the redhead was now minus his head. Grabbing me by the arm, Walther dragged across the bloody battlefield. 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 door, there was no way I was going to sit in here until he came back to kill me. But the door wouldn’t open. Somehow he’d locked me in from the outside without a key.

I was two seconds away from picking up a chair to bash into the door 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 before to see anyone.

Gerik stood strong and tall, light 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 two's and three’s. 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 and tried again to punch and kick the window out.

Still shaking, Gerik let loose identical balls of flames in Walther’s direction. The flames caught and the Skin Eater 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 my Viking 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 scoured the room, deciding on a chair and bashed it against the window. The window, a mix of glass and plastic, after several beatings, finally popped from its casing.

Blood gushing from his nose and mouth, Gerik to pull himself up. Shaking, he managed to 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 ears.

My feet hit the ground and I took off 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 had 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.” The flames flew from his hands and closed in on Walther. His screams, I would bet, were heard for miles.

These weren’t like the other flames. This wasn’t like any kind of fire I’d ever seen. The black wisps writhing inside the flames seemed to take on a life of their own. As the fire licked against Walther’s skin, the blackness looked very much like shadows of arms and hands ripping away at his muscle and tissue until nothing but steaming, smoldering bones and silence remained. Not long after Walther had gone quiet, Gerik collapsed.

“The bodies!” Jericho shouted out, “Make sure the others are dead!”

The black mist surrounding the pile of steaming bones had swirled upward into the sky then doubled back toward where Gerik lay. It hovered over his body, touching and probing him with its tendrils of darkness.

Then, in one vicious swoop, the black mist entered his mouth and disappeared inside of him. Already violently shaking, Gerik’s body jackknifed off the ground. I took off running in his direction.

“Don’t touch him Trinity!” Stefan yelled. “He used magic he shouldn’t have. There is no telling what happened to him!”

“Gerik?” I whispered, crouching down next to him. I reached out to move blood soaked hair out of his eyes. What I saw made my heart stop.

Gerik’s eyes were as black as Walther’s had been, not a drop of color remaining. Blood covered him from his nose to his knees and his chest was heaving heavily forward, as if something within him was trying to force its way out.

“Oh Gods, Gerik what did you do?” I cried.

I jumped as Jericho put his hands on my shoulders. He began to drag me backwards. “Stay away from him, child.”

“We need to go,” Djordji said, sounding panicked. “All of us need to leave. Right now.”

I turned to stare at them, disgusted. Gerik had just saved countless lives and we needed to go? Leave him here hurting? Or worse, to die?

With no warning, Gerik jumped to his feet and let loose a horrifying roar. Black smoke poured from both his nose and mouth.

Was he taller? Wider? He looked downright massive.

“Stimati Dumnezeu ne salva,” Stefan murmured. “The boy has horns.”

My gaze shifted to Gerik’s face. The skin had split at his hairline directly above his eyes. An inch in diameter black horns had grown upward over his head then curved down until they reached his ears in sharp points.

Another roar, louder than the first, had me covering my ears. His t-shirt and jeans were already torn and hanging off of him yet the distinct sound of tearing could still be heard as Gerik’s body continued to heave.

“Oh my Gods,” I cried.

It wasn’t only that he was growing; his skin was actually splitting apart. Invisible claws were shredding him across his chest and arms and revealing… scales? Diamond shaped, shiny black scales appeared beneath the spitting skin until his entire left arm and a good portion of his chest were covered in them.

Stefan pulled me into his arms, trying to turn me away. “Don’t look Trinity; this isn’t something you’re going to want to see.”

“I’m not leaving him,” I whispered. “He won’t hurt me,” I said, not knowing if that was true or not.

Stefan hesitated. He might have let go of me if Gerik hadn’t chosen that moment to hit the ground with an ear splitting scream.

He kept on screaming while black spikes ripped through his back, each one not quite as thick or as long as the one before it.

“Is he dying?” I managed to ask through my sobs.

“No,” Stefan whispered, his voice shaking. “Balaur…Gerik is becoming a dragon.”