Chapter 61 Faye
“I’m too old to fight this fight with you boys, but it doesn’t mean I can’t help you get prepared,” Bjorn expressed, coming in from the back porch and grabbing a set of vintage looking keys.
“Follow me to the winery.” Bjorn led us down a tunnel into a hidden basement underneath the winery.
It was the same tunnel Ma had connected to her house.
“These tunnels… are they all connected?” I asked as he led us down further into the abyss.
“Yes, we are the guards of the last book of incantations. It was a pact made hundreds of years ago, between Grimstone’s founding families, to protect the book and the land.”
Jax and Bjorn looked at each other, troubled.
“Oh my gods, what? Just fucking tell me!” I sighed, while Rocky snickered behind me.
“In order for you to get your full inheritance of gifts, a sacrifice must be made, prima. It doesn’t just happen overnight,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Occult Encyclopedia!” I mocked and rolled my eyes at her.
“?No mames! (don’t start)” Rocky matched my energy, sticking her pierced tongue out at me.
We began bickering in the catacomb while walking deeper into the earth than I would like to be.
“Look, I was to be sacrificed. Why would I do that to someone? I definitely don’t want it done to me.”
“Are you scared, prima?” Rocky asked, sucking her teeth at me.
“Wait, so you’ve done this?” I asked her, covering my nose from the stench of death wallowing in the deep cave that swallowed us alive.
“We all have to do it, it’s tradition,” she replied and switched her lighter on, the flicker of flame barely a source of light in the vast, cold darkness.
“You would kill someone?” I chuckled, entertained by this thought.
Raquel smirked menacingly. “Maybe.”
I gulped at her wicked smirk.
“It’s a blood sacrifice, not a death sacrifice, unless of course you want it to be. Either one gets the job done,” Rocky scoffed as we continued to follow the Grimwood’s.
“Gods, I feel like I’m learning so much, thank you.” I rolled my eyes at her.
“You’re welcome,” Raquel snickered.
“What is your problem, Raquel, are you here to help or not?” I asked, pushed to my limits.
“Are you willing to become the baddest bruja that’s ever walked this earth? Are you willing to take your initiation?” she asked, pointing the knife at me.
As soon as Jax saw, he targeted her. “Get that knife off of her, or so help your gods,” he threatened, challenging her.
“Cute… a Grim,.” She laughed. “Since when do you need a man to protect you, prima?” Darkness filled her eyes as dark veins ravished her skin, spreading like wild fire.
“What are you?” I gasped.
“You’re not the only hybrid that walks this land,” she answered.
Clearly.
“The girl who cheated death,” Ryker interfered in our conversation from behind us. “Shifters can cross between realms. From the living and the dead.”
“A shifter? A shifter into what?” I asked, curiously. Cheated death? What?
Ryker could sense the tension. “We had a feeling Vadon and his family had something to do with it, but we didn’t have evidence. They hide well.”
Jaxon interrupted Rocky’s talent show. “Penny is in on this as well?”
I looked to Rocky for answers.
“Penelope is a Robles and a Nightbloom, of course she is.” Rocky and I followed the Grimwood’s deeper into the earth.
“The three hybrids, it’s the trinity sacrifice. They wouldn’t need another sacrifice for three more centuries,” Ryker commented, with the flickering lantern in his hands.
“They’re after all of us, prima, not just you. This is our fight, too. Luckily, you got away. I can’t say the same for Penny.” Rocky shoved past me in the narrow tunnel.
“What do you mean? What’s happened to her?” I asked, fear beginning to cave my chest.
“Why do you think I’m here with these Reapers?” she huffed, as if disgusted. “They took her, Faye!” Her tears were now visible to me. I now understood her targeted anger.
“I… I felt it. I knew it. I knew something wasn’t right.” I stopped Rocky while the Grims moved on. “Hey, we’re gonna get her back, I promise,” I reassured her.
Rocky gulped, nodding at me as we hugged in the dark catacomb.
Rocky never dealt with grief like other people did.
She hid it away like it was a kept secret, never to be shown the light of day.
If you didn’t think about it, you didn’t feel itI, was her way of thinking.
But even secrets demanded attention sometimes.
Emotions were like catastrophic waves, they came and went, the waves sweeping you under.
Rocky? She just floated. Never diving deep into the sea of emotions that kept her from going to shore.
Floating was no way to live, but neither was drowning.
There was something my cousin wasn’t telling me.
Something harboring her there like an anchor.
I could sense it like a feral itch beneath my nerves.
We finally stopped as the walls began to shake around us. Bjorn pressed a hidden stone in the wall, and it opened a stone door to another hidden part of the cave, where there was a huge room. These tunnels were like a maze. There were so many hidden passageways and cave-like rooms.
“Come,” he said, leading us into the path, lighting the way with his lantern.
The walls were dressed with ancient Nordic Militia weapons—things civilians and humans didn’t have access to. Bjorn began loading and locking an old vintage shotgun with Nordic designs on the handle.
I then spotted a vintage gold pistol wrapped in Latin scripture. I picked it up, surprised by the heaviness in such a small item.
“Ah the ole’ gal, Sally.” Bjorn came up behind me. “Nice pickin’s, Faye. She has a kick to her, don’t let her looks deceive you.”
“Interesting, because so do I.” There was a gleam in my eye as I inspected the pistol.
“You know, Diana always loved you. You were the daughter she never had. I know your Ma and my wife never got along in the end, but—”
“Wait, what do you mean in the end?”
“Diana, Stefani, Catori, and Selene, they were inseparable growing up. They were best friends, Faye. Your ma, she didn’t tell you?” he asked nervously.
“Apparently that woman didn’t tell me a lot,” I huffed in annoyance.
“Stefani decided she wanted a normal life, and there was no way that Diana could give that to her being in love with a Reaper,” he replied with remorse in his gaze.
“Wow, the audacity of this woman. You know, I just found out my father abandoned me, because he’s apparently a god or some shit.” I laughed cynically. “She had no right to judge Diana for being with a Reaper, it’s hypocritical.” I did not understand why Ma would keep their friendship from me.
“Listen, Faye, I’m not here to bash Stefani.
She and I respected each other. After she had you, you have to understand her priorities changed.
Diana was pregnant with Jaxon, and we understood her stance when it came to you, so we backed off.
It was hard for Diana, she grieved your mom for years.
But then you and Jax… We never saw it coming.
Diana said it was always a sign to bring her and Stefani back together—that it was fate and all this other crazy stuff she would babble on about. ”
A memory of Diana always being so welcoming to me came to mind.
She was always into Grimstone’s myths and legends and she would tell them to us as teens, around by the bonfire that kept us drunken youths warm.
Diana was such a believer, always so superstitious.
Who wouldn’t be after falling in love with a Reaper and having three Grim sons.
“She always asked about Ma, but she never told me,” I whispered, hurt by this truth.
Bjorn handed me an old picture, with the edges burnt, of all four of them. They all sat at a table, playing dominoes and cards. You could sense the love and the happiness just by looking at the photo.
“She would rather cut a limb off than betray your mother. They were more than friends, they were sisters,” he sighed, looking at the photo.
“I wish I could have said goodbye. I wish I could tell her thank you, for everything she did for me.”
Bjorn watched as I gazed at the picture of my ma with her friends.
“She called it, ya know, you coming back someday. She said she always had faith that you and Jaxon would reunite. Something about it being in the stars.” Bjorn rubbed his silver beard. It was the same thinking tick Jax had. “I sure do miss her,” he said with a cracked voice.
I picked up the pistol and loaded the chamber. “We’ll call you Dirty Diana.” I placed her in my boot.
I could see Bjorn holding back his tears beaming with pride.
“You and Birdie are family, Faye. The Robles bloodline has always been an ally to the Grimwood’s.
Your mother and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but I did admire her.
She was a true warrior spirit with all her wisdom.
She was a nurturer, and a fighter, and I respected her despite all our differences.
She was there for her the whole time through her sickness, and was an amazing friend to Diana in the end.
The cancer brought them back together one last time.
” A small smile spread across Bjorn’s face.
“I’d like to think they’re in Valhalla, laughing and singing together in the kitchen at midnight, while they have their margaritas. ”
A tear fell from my eye and Bjorn wiped it away.
“Do not weep for them, child, your mother died an honorable death. She died doing what she loved, protecting those she loved.” The giant, silver-bearded Bjorn hugged me, towering over my five-foot-three stature.
Come to think of it, Bjorn was the only male figure I’d had in my life since I was a teen.
“Two more days before these souls meet death,” Bjorn said, hugging me tight.