Chapter 50 Faye
Iknew the questions were itching at my soul, and more than that, I knew there were things I needed to share with Jax as well.
I needed to get closure on things before Jax and I moved on with one another, especially with Birdie being in the picture.
Jax invited me to a barbecue this weekend with his family, where the plan was to have this conversation after the outing, but as soon as we pulled up to the gathering I could feel my nerves leaving my body.
Did I really want to know? Did I want to break this dream with Jax after everything we had been through?
Everything was perfect, maybe too perfect.
I was quiet the whole ride to the barn, trying to ease my anxiety. Why was I so nervous, and how did this barbecue have anything to do with all of this? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because they might be vigilante wolves underneath all that country rebel charm?
“Are you good?” Jax asked, hijacking me from my irrational thoughts behind his wheel.
“I’m good.” I intertwined Jax’s tattooed hands in mine.
“You seem nervous is all,” Jax said, side-eyeing me, his other knuckle wrapped around the steering wheel. “Don’t worry, baby, you’ll get a squeeze later.” Jax smirked.
Why did it seem like this man knew my internal dialogue at all times? “Okay, sue me, asshole. I’m a little nervous,” I said, smacking his broad shoulder.
“Don’t worry, senorita, they won't bite you, especially when these big guns are around.” Jax flexed and kissed his muscles.
“You are so annoying, you know that?” I quipped, giving him the biggest eye roll of my life.
“I love you too,” he said coyly, and I could feel my cheeks flush.
The barn doors opened and I looked around in utter shock.
This was anything but a barn storage unit.
The inside was remodeled, from the wooden floors to the black walls with rustic wood finishes, giving the room a western gothic feel that I had never been able to place until now.
There were two levels; the upstairs consisted of several spacious rooms, with cherry oak wood flooring, while the first floor was more of an open living room, garage with all their bikes parked, and a kitchenette.
But it was what was in the middle of the living room that took my breath away.
Nobody was ever allowed on this quarter of the Grimwood property.
Only a select few had ever stepped foot on this part of the farm.
There in the dining room, sat a huge knight looking table, round enough to sit twenty people.
It was a dark wooden table, with the exact same Reaper logo they had on their peacoats.
It read ‘Grimwood’ with a Viking rune. I ran my fingers across the old English lettering, and the Reaper that took up the whole table.
Despite how intimidating it looked, I couldn’t deny how beautiful and intricate the design was.
I took everything in, confirming what I believed.
This wasn’t just a brotherhood, this was something much more than that.
The question was, were they dangerous? And if so, why did I feel so at home?
Like I belonged here. I felt… safe. A brazen vision split my cranium on fire.
Souls screamed in the distance, the heat from the fire blazed rampant against my skin.
The screams sounded as they were being tortured, descending below my very feet.
Jax grabbed my clammy hand tighter, sensing my nerves.
I gave him a smile, assuring him I was okay.
I could handle this, whatever it was. It was the fact that he was allowing me into his world in the first place that hushed my anxieties.
Jax would never hurt me, this I knew. But I needed to know more, the depths, the details.
I didn’t want to be in the dark anymore. I wanted to be with Jax, all of him.
I loved him, but it was so clear in this moment, he was telling me I’d have to love this truth too.
Accept whatever he’s been keeping from me.
Something or someone new was growing under my skin, making it thick and menacing.
Truths I had yet to face myself. My cryptic visions, the inevitable changes, were taking up space inside me.
I knew the answers were there for my taking, finally ready to claim it, to bask in it.
I was tired of running from my past, from me.
Afraid of rejection and the unknown—a concoction deadly and poisonous to my sanity, reeking havoc on my mind.
I needed to break free of these chains. I needed to be liberated.
“Tonight is a full moon,” Jax muttered, as he began sliding fake wooden doors that were locked with heavy chains aside.
“What is this?” I asked, astounded.
“My family’s tomb, come.” Jax grabbed a lit lantern, and led me down a path of nothing but void.
So mute of sound I could hear my own heartbeat in my chest. Ominous hums came from the distance, and uncertainty crippled me.
“Do not be afraid, no harm will come to you here,” he assured me.
My breath hitched as my anxiety fluttered in my chest. “I need you to trust me.”
Jax held out his hand to me, and as the lantern flickered, a hollow skeletal figure reflected onto his face.
I blinked away the visions that had been taunting me, denial overcoming me.
It wasn’t real. It was just dark and I was imagining things.
I was trying to convince myself of my internal battle, these macabre visions overpowering my common sense.
The morbid chants continued to echo in the background.
I asked for this, this is what I wanted, the truth, and with that comes honesty, as harsh or unnerving as it may seem.
I grabbed Jax’s hand tight, making him feel certain. “I trust you,” I replied, those three words meaning more to me than love. Love is nothing without trust.
Jax kissed my hand. “Whatever you see, whatever you hear, remember, I love you.”
The words were still wreaking havoc on my entire being.
As his form grew upon me, into shadows as dark as night, they swarmed my body in ropes of mist and darkness.
The reality settled inside of me like a harbor, no longer able to deny what I was observing.
The dark silhouettes were cold as they slithered around me like a protective barrier.
The onyx shadows lifted me as we clung to the darkness, visibly deeper in the catacomb.
There stood four other giants in the abyss, their faces hidden from behind their draped cloaks and hoods.
They all stood before an altar surrounded by lit candles and old bones.
Their long skeletal fingers grasped on to flickering lanterns.
Fear wanted to strike any bravery I had left.
“Welcome to our annual ásatrú. A time where we worship our Norse gods and ancestors.” The voice was deep and loud, the earth shaking with its vindication.
Jax appeared behind me as a dark, cold mist. My mind was still trying to grasp my reality. I watched the tall, shadowed creatures sing in a language I didn’t understand. It was captivating and frightening, I was unable to look away from the most beautiful, devastatingly morbid scene before me.
“You’re in a cult and you have shadows, what is this?” I asked, anxiousness beginning to stir, the words and confusion bursting out of me.
Jax’s sinister laugh vibrated off the catacomb walls. “I wish it was that simple, I do. This goes beyond beliefs, Faye, this is my bloodline.”
The tall shadowed figures formed in a circle as they continued chanting.
“Twice a year, for each solstice, we must make a sacrifice to Odin, for saving my kind from a curse set upon my bloodline centuries ago by a malevolent spell binder.”
Those two words caught my attention, mounting like planted seeds in my gut. “I don’t understand, Jax.” I peered at the four giants full of trepidation.
“We reap and sacrifice the filthiest souls to Odin each solstice to honor him,” he explained, as his shadows surrounded me.
My hands began to shake at his admission. “What do you mean by reap and sacrifice?” I asked, gulping, gazing at the shadowed skeletal giants before me. I needed immediate explanations that weren’t cryptic, vague, and drove me to my wits end.
“Just, remember what I told you,” Jax whispered to me, his dark shadows surrounding my body like sprouted veins, to an old oak tree. He grabbed my chin and rubbed my bottom lip, shadows lurking from every corner of his tall frame.
Before I could blink, he vanished to the other side of the cave. One of the giants dissipated into a onyx void and instantly appeared with three men, shackled and beaten. My eyes had to be deceiving me, a haunting reality overriding my existence.
“May we feast, sons! Behold our eternal sacrifice to Odin, this winter solstice!” The shadowed hooded giants all at once mocked their victims in wicked laughter.
“To Odin!” Each shadowed creature took a shackled man, one by one grabbing their human sacrifice. They held their naked bloodied bodies in the air, with their long, skeletal fingers wrapped around their victims’ throats, choking the air from them. The battered men begged and pleaded for mercy.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make a peep. I was paralyzed in terror.
“Look into Death’s eyes and admit your sins!” A monstrous voice vibrated from Jax’s throat.
The shadowed giants took off their hoods one by one, leaving me in awe. Jaxon, Creed, Ryker, and Bjorn all stood before me, their faces contorted into ravenous shadowed Reapers, their eyes only hollow holes of darkness born of hell itself.
I covered my mouth so they wouldn’t hear my screams.
The shackled men’s eyes turned opaque, as if their very souls were desolate, sucked into the void of their hollow hellish eyes.
“I’m so sorry, please, please forgive me, I will do better, please!” one of the men begged and whined, urinating on himself.
The Reapers laughed in wicked unison.
I covered my ears as the sounds of hell and vengeance surrounded the cave with a pitch too high for normal humans.
“Admit your vile sins, boy!” Bjorn’s shadowed Reaper screeched and the cave shook.
The man sulked as he cried to a god who no longer believed in him. “I… I hurt her. I was supposed to protect her, but I…” The man’s snot began seeping from his nasal cavity.
“Say it, filthy soul!” Jax grabbed the man’s throat tighter, peering right into his almost vacant soul.
“I molested my daughter,” the man wailed in shame.
Tears strained in my eyes. The other men cried in fear knowing they were next.
“Time to meet Death!” the Reapers seethed.
The man’s soul was suddenly sucked from his body as the light in his eyes went dim and his body limp.
Jax’s skeletal giant threw the man’s lifeless body to the altar.
Before he could look back at me, I began running.
Running into the void, where nothing but obscurity surrounded me.
“Little ljos!” the Reaper roared in agony, the echoes chasing me through the dark catacomb.
I ran with my arms before me, hoping to feel anything, but there was nothing but frigid darkness inside this catacomb. Wham! I ran right into a wall, and my consciousness began to slip from my grasp.
“It’s okay, little Robles, I got you.” Bjorn appeared in a shadowed light. As my vision began to falter.
“Is she alright, Pop?”
Running footsteps in the distance surrounded me.
“Jaxon,” I whispered as he appeared in my faint vision.
“Remember what I told you, baby.” His words clung to me like threaded cobwebs.
My vision went black.