Page 52 of Sinister Hearts
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 hiddenfrom 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.
