Chapter 55
We pulled up to Ma’s house and noticed the fluorescent police lights instantly.
Jax and I gave each other a panicked look and he abruptly stopped his truck. We both ran out of the truck and into the small farmhouse.
“What’s going on?” I asked, running into the house.
We looked around as four officers were inside taking notes.
Fear engulfed me. “Where is Birdie? Where is Ma?” I shouted. I began to search for them in all the rooms, my fear growing into a beastly monster. “Ma, where are you? Birdie?” My voice was growing hoarse with every shouted call.
One of the cops touched my arm. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step outside.”
“Don’t fucking touch me. Where is my family?” I asked, pacing every corner of the house, hoping they would appear.
Jax stood behind me and rubbed my achy shoulders, trying to calm me.
“We can’t find them. Someone called reporting commotion on the property, but all we could find, ma’am, was this,” he said, as they led me past the caution tape in the kitchen.
There were splatters of blood on Ma’s tiled kitchen floor.
All I felt was agony, pain, and anger. I couldn’t breathe so I ran outside trying and gasping for air, but I simply couldn’t find it.
I fell to the dirt, screaming to the sky, as if the gods themselves could hear me, digging my nails into the sand until my fingertips bled.
“Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood!” I screamed.
All the house windows combusted from my wails as I sunk deeper into the earth.
At this moment, I wanted to be buried in it, forgotten there to die.
I pounded my fists into the rubble, drowning in my excruciating pain, shouting at the gods.
Lightning struck, lighting up the sky as it began to pour rain, the rain drops and my tears mixing together.
Nothing was as heavy as my soul. “He did this, it was him,” I screamed.
Jax looked at me, already knowing who. Vadon. His eyes grew black with a murderous look of vengeance reflecting back at me.
We spent hours speaking to the cops and trying to get a hold of Vadon without any luck.
We told the cops all we could, but we knew this was personal.
We knew they would never believe Vadon did this, due to his ties in Cravyn City.
I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, my thoughts kept going to the darkest of places.
“What if they were harmed? They’re alone, Jax, and I’m not there,” I wept.
Jax grew quiet over the last few hours and I could see the anger, simmering like a pot ready to burst. He laid me on the bed. “I’ll be back. We’re holding a meeting to get this figured out. We will find them, Faye,” he said, kissing my forehead and closing the door.
I laid there, empty, while my family was missing, crying like a weakling.
I was tired of feeling weak. I was tired of being this man’s target.
I was going to find my family, and I would do whatever the hell I needed to do to get them back.
I would walk through hell for the ones I loved.
I’d had enough. Anger coiled in my bloodstream.
When it came to my family, there would be no grace, no line drawn.
There would be no empathy. I was going to kill this motherfucker.
Fuck being in bed crying. Fuck this, and fuck him!
I was going to find them. No matter the cost.
I got myself up, my body heavy and weak.
I grabbed my coat and headed to the barn, where I knew the meeting was being held.
I walked across the farm and I could overhear voices.
I stopped to listen. It was Jax, Creed, and Ryker sitting at the round Reaper table.
They all sat in their chairs, with their patched coats and cowboy hats.
I slipped away, quietly calling the only person who I knew would have my back. “Rocky, I need you,” I said, numb to the reality I was currently in. I felt like I was outside my own flesh and body, not knowing whether my daughter and mother were dead or alive.
“Ask and you shall receive, prima,” Raquel answered.
“They’re gone, cousin, he took them,” I cried desperately into the phone.
“Slow down, what are you saying? Who?” Rocky asked.
“Ma and Birdie,” I replied.
Silence fell between us both.
“Where are you?” Rocky asked me in fury.
“Grimwood farm.” My voice was shaky and weak.
“I’ll be there shortly,” she said.
Click.
Rocky showed up in less than ten minutes, and I was in no condition to ask questions. I needed her help and was thankful she came at all.
“They’re alive somewhere, I can feel them in my achy bones.”
She winced, pacing the living room. “A locator spell, say less,” having a light-bulb moment she began scrounging through her black medical bag, taking out a scroll that looked like a map.
It was a map of both Grimstone and Cravyn City.
She then took out a tourmaline pendant wrapped in gold metal swirls “Give me your hand.”
Rocky took my hand and spread my palm as she cut me with a dagger. The blade sliced my skin open and I winced at the pain that couldn’t dare compare to the pain I was already in. I let the blood trickle from my palm onto the scrolled map.
She began chanting a foreign language, “Caro de carne mea, monstra te.” (Flesh of my flesh, show yourself.) She spoke to the map.
My crimson blood gathered in magnetic spurts on the map. It stopped at a certain location. Both of us followed where my blood landed on the scrolled map, and we eyed each other in confusion.
“This can’t be,” Raquel said, seemingly perplexed. I looked at the map for answers, realizing the location my blood settled was Ma’s house.
“How could it be?” I whispered, my thoughts racing, making me dizzy. “The catacombs!” I retorted, the realization hitting me like moving targets.