Chapter 58
Ineeded to process everything. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
I felt like someone threw me on a roller coaster and forgot to strap me in or give me a damn warning.
As much as I’d love to return to some type of normalcy, I knew that was impossible and that “normal” didn’t have a place in our lives anymore.
Perhaps it never did, and we were all fools to want to live such simplistic lives.
After all, Ma tried. These vile fuck-faces tried to take my daughter and killed my mother.
I would make sure they knew they messed with the wrong witch.
My fury grew beneath my hot, thick skin, my fingertips feeling like hot coal.
I got back to the Grimwood farm before sunset. The sight of Creed with Birdie on the horses captivated me as I pulled up in my black square Chevy. A sigh of relief escaped my lungs.
“Mama, look, I’m on a horse!” Birdie shouted to me, waving at me from her small saddle, as if she didn’t just have the most traumatic day.
I was amazed by her resilience— she was a Robles after all.
Jax wasn’t playing, she was perfectly safe and content here.
A warmth hit my heart. This man got the most sentimental reactions out of me, even while I was falling apart.
Creed hung on to the brown leather reins, walking Birdie in circles in the arena while I watched from the fence, their figures melting in the golden and pink hues of the sunset as the sky began to cast its dark shade of night.
She’s alive and well, we all are, because of my mother.
The lump forming in my throat was too much to swallow.
My mother protected us to the very end. Hate and something evil stirred inside me, wanting to claw out of me like a mad wolf.
I took out Ma’s letter, reading it over and over, hoping somehow it would bring her back.
It’s no damn wonder the shit-stain never wanted to come to the house.
“Because he couldn’t”, I whispered out loud as my thoughts raced.
It was always some excuse with him, about why he couldn’t ever make it to Ma’s.
It was always a business meeting, or he had to work late. It was always something.
Rocky confirmed and educated me on the protection spell set by our ancestors, it was for anyone who intended harm to any of our family members on our land. A blood and an indigenous bind, the strongest of our kind, protecting our lineage and our land.
But why not sacrifice me? Why Birdie? I mean, that’s why they were trying to take her, wasn’t it?
I walked into the barndominium, still feeling numb and outside of myself, a sense of auto-pilot holding me and suffocating me relentlessly.
“Ryker, let me see the grimoire please.” I was curious about a question that’s been tugging at my mind.
The pages seamlessly skimmed to page 777 as soon as I touched it, as if my touch gave away all my secrets and questions in a silence only we could understand.
I sat at the round Reaper table. I began reading and it all began to make sense, word by word, sentence by sentence, the awareness hitting me like a solid brick.
“It has to be a female witch, of age twenty-five, but why?” I read the words, confused, not understanding.
“Usually right before our twenty-fifth birthday we either claim our magic, or we walk away from it, disowning our craft and who we are. Once we complete our initiation and claim our magic, that is when our gifts reach their full potential, making the sacrifice that much stronger,” Rocky retorted, making sense of it all for me.
“Women spell binders are some of the strongest and wisest witches of our time. Men hold no value in the occult, not like we do, anyhow. It’s why we are respected, and also sought after,” she sighed, standing by me.
I felt like my brain might explode on the wood floor with all the newfound discoveries. “If I would have stayed just one more year with Vadon, I surely would have met my demise.”
That thought made my skin crawl. Jax rubbed my shoulder in a nervous tick. I could see the disdain in his eyes. I clutched the old dusty grimoire to my heavy chest. It was a fate I was too close to living. A dark fate that cost me my mother’s life, and nearly my daughter’s. My flesh and blood.
Ryker intervened in my cynical thoughts that were overpowered by grief, and showed us his laptop screen full of codes I could not possibly understand in any lifetime.
“I’ve hacked the neighbor's camera footage. Stefani didn’t have any security systems,” he stated.
I winced at the mere mention of my mother’s name.
Ryker shook his head in frustration, ignoring my sudden discomfort. “Which I will be installing today!”
I didn’t ever realize until now that Ryker’s always been straight to the point, no gimmicks.
He hardly ever showed emotion, not even anger.
He was a genius, full of information and wit, but sometimes lacked emotional understanding.
In a way I was jealous of not feeling everyone’s emotions constantly.
Some may have taken offense to this, especially in high school.
He was always locked away in the library on a computer.
He’s brilliant and deathly beautiful, just like his brothers, only different, and magnificent in ways his brothers could never be.
Creed walked in with Birdie and she ran to me. I hugged her, smiling at her dirty, sand-covered face. Her presence alone made my heart swarm in the only warmth I could allow, despite my lingering pain.
“Me and Creed are gonna make cookies, you want some, Mama?” Birdie jumped up and down.
“I would love some!” I said, and picked her up, twirling her in the air and setting her down. Birdie ran after Creed into the kitchen with Bjorn.
“How is it that man is the most vile Reaper on the planet, yet Birdie loves him?” Rocky appeared from out of nowhere, scaring the absolute shit out of me as always.
“Will you stop doing that!” I screamed while Rocky smirked. She crossed her arms and watched them mix the baking powder and chocolate chips.
“Intrigued, are we?” I said, side-eyeing my cousin with a smirk of my own.
“Just making sure the Reaper doesn’t make a batch out of my niece is all.” Rocky blew me off with an eye twirl.
Right.
Ryker came forward, breaking our silence “You’re going to want to see this.”
Rocky and I eyed each other suspiciously as we followed him into his tech security room, both of us were baffled by his sophisticated set up. There were computers and TV screens everywhere.
“I found this footage on one of your neighbors' security cameras.” He zoomed in as I watched Birdie make her way to the gate, right where the protective bind ends.
This person, this thing, knew to lead her out past the boundary.
I watched, as my heart pounded in my ears and chest. Rocky grabbed my hand and applied pressure, like we always did when one of us was in distress.
We weren’t huggers, but this had been our love language ever since we were little ghouls.
We watched in silence as Birdie dropped her garden bucket and began following a mysterious voice. But not just any voice, an exact mimic of my own.
“Biiiiirdiiiieeeee,” the voice kept calling out in a loud, melodic whisper.
“Mama?” Birdie replied to the insidious voice, as she began following it outside the property.
Then it appeared. A replica of me. There were some differences, like I wasn’t wearing my necklace, and my hair was shorter, like it was months ago. Simple things that a five year old child would miss and never notice. I covered my mouth in disbelief, feeling my skin go raw and clammy.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered in shock, not being able to remove my eyes from the screen.
A sudden blast sent the mysterious being back as it ran and morphed into a terrifying white, lengthy, creature.
Its arms and legs were an unusual length, taking up most of its body.
The creature ran towards my mother on all fours as it screeched in fury, its long slithery black tongue dripping saliva, its teeth rotten and sharp.
Those eyes… I’ve seen them before. That night in the horse stall, they glowed the same murky yellow hue.
This creature had been stalking me for months and I didn’t even realize.
Preying on us, learning our routine, our habits, my life!
I gasped, terrified at this realization.
Jax came in from the stalls and held me, almost like he could sense my pain and discomfort.
I continued to watch the wide screens in shock, as my face streamed with warm tears.
I watched my mother battle off with this monster, alone, yet so fierce.
A sense of pride had overcome me. She fought till death to save Birdie, to save me.
The monster then struck her, gashing her in the stomach with its long filthy claws.
She screamed and then chanted something in Latin, blasting the creature forward yet again with the strength she had left.
This time the blow wounded the creature.
It screeched in agony, landing on a bush of cacti, then sprinted away, howling on all fours into the dark desert abyss.
Its human form began to ascend from its monstrous gooey skin like a second layer.
“This. This thing is what killed her,” I said, observing Ma grab Birdie as she bled on her nightgown. I watched as she wrapped her stomach with her apron and ran into the house where they must have entered the catacombs to hide. Where she bled out, protecting Birdie from this monster.
“Wait! Pause it… there!” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
We all gasped in disbelief. Ryker paused the screen and zoomed in. A brunette with beady brown eyes. Avianna. It couldn’t be.