It could never be soon enough.
He studied Fynn’s profile. A messy ponytail pulled her strange metallic-colored hair off her face. He would never let her wear a ponytail. He would always make her wear it down over her shoulders. At the beach, he got full few of the cabled muscles of her arms, legs, back, and stomach. Those would soften once she belonged to him. She would have no interest in surfing, swimming, or archery then.
It was her smile that made her so special, he realized. It was the smile of someone who had no need to be afraid. Then he was touching the screen, his fingertips tracing the pixels of light. She was so unchanged. She was a grown woman now, but he could see the young girl in that smile.
When he closed his eyes, he could still see her unkempt metallic auburn hair, her skin the same brown as her father’s, her eyes the improbable dark green of her mother’s. What fascinated him most was her slow way of moving, as though the tides of the sea would wait for her word. He could not imagine Fynn ever being afraid.
Even when they were children together at that commune in the mountains, he felt her quiet power. She was kind to him.
Mother took them from the Keep when they were kids, but Cain never forgot Fynn. His love for her had only grown over the years. He’d seen her since, but only from a distance. Cain wondered if she would recognize him when they met again.
He watched her whenever he could steal a chance. He loved driving out to St. Cocha and following her around town and on campus, lying in wait for the hope of even just one glimpse of her.
He had a sweet memory of Fynn running while he chased her through a meadow outside Brigid’s Keep. He was fifteen and she was eight. He had escaped from his mother long enough to find Fynn with the other kids, playing tag in the high grass and wildflowers. She looked over her shoulder at Cain. The sun lit her hair in a halo. Her eyes were filled with kindness and play, and he knew in that moment that she loved him. She loved him and he loved her. He never touched her, but, in that moment, he knew that he would wait until she was old enough and he would make her his forever.
“Is this your idea of internet porn? It’s rather dreary.” His mother stood behind him. He rushed to close the file. She clamped her iron fingers around his wrist. “Don’t try to pretend you weren’t looking,” she said. “I want to see, too.”
“Just doing research.” Cain’s neck burned. “Keeping on top of the Kildare situation.”
“I’ll bet,” his mother said. Her Chanel perfume coated the back of his throat. Long red fingernails clicked along the keyboard like insect legs. He forced himself to be still, even while recoiling shivers rolled up and down his back.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been here since last night.” A casual conversation might take her mind off his business.
“Working,” she said.
Her breath puffed against his cheek. He glanced at her face. He hated to see Fynn’s image reflected in her eyes. “You pine for this girl,” she said. “When you could have any woman you wanted.”
“I don’t think it’s for you to worry about, Mother.”
“A man like you. So rich, so hot.” She walked her fingers along his shoulders and began kneading the back of his neck. Cain swallowed a flume of rising bile. “Once she has babies, it’s over, you know. Her mother and sister will be dead, but as long as one lives, there can always be the Triple Goddess again. Then she will be too powerful for you to control.”
“I thought of that. I’m not stupid,” he said. Resentment tingled in his jaw. He bit it back. He had to keep calm. This was an old conversation. They always had the same one, hashing over the same details of their compromise. She liked to make him feel every inch of her generosity.
“So what are you going to do before you run off to play castaway? Make a hysterectomy stop and drop her uterus off on the way?”
Cain shut the screen to blackness. When his mother laughed, it sounded like it came from the throat of a dead woman. “You are! How perfect,” she said. “You truly have thought of everything. She’ll hate you, of course, but that won’t matter so much. The world will be over beyond your bug-bitten island, anyway. Maybe by the time she’s ninety, she’ll forgive you enough to let you touch her.”
She bore down on the loose spot in his shoulder. When he was a child, she had dislocated the bone from the ligament there. She dug in where she knew it still hurt the most. Cain opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was sucked into pain.
“I would give you any woman in the world, but you had to choose her,” she said. “When you know the death of the Three would make me so happy.”
His shoulder thunked out of joint. He winced in agony, but did not cry out. She stepped off to watch him push the bone back into its socket. He gagged as it slipped in.
“But I’ll let you have her. I’m too good to you, Son. I always have been.” She moved toward the eastern window. “Life with you will be a living hell for her,” she said. “That will have to be enough for me.”
“They’ve been moving,” he said, his voice tight. Waves of pain emanated down his arm. He needed to get her off the subject of Fynn before she changed her mind about letting him have her.
“Yes,” she said, ticking her nails against the thick glass. “Today is the day.”
She motioned him to join her. He patted his forehead with a handkerchief. Evidence of pain whetted her appetite for more. He had years of practice hiding all kinds of agonies.
He stood as far from her as he dared, but he needn’t have worried. She had forgotten about her games with Cain. She clapped like a delighted child, her eyes shining. Below, his brothers stirred. The nurses bustled around the monitors, unaware that the brothers would be hungry when they woke up. Cain’s mother flipped the switch to the speakers so that she could enjoy the screaming. Today there would be no pretending that the abomination on the eastern floor was not happening.
Not that there wouldn’t be pretending. Cain would pretend to watch with disinterest. He would pretend he did not feel disgusted.
He would pretend he was not afraid.
6. The Mercy of Sharks
The early morning waves moved under Fynn’s surfboard in their indifferent way. It was a rocky day. Fynn knew enough of the sea to trust it to turn in an instant. Surfing was forbidden in St. Cocha Alley and if the city could afford enough law enforcement to keep the hardcore surfers away, it would. This part of the water stretched beyond the protection of the bay and instead of a sandy beach, it broke against a rocky cliff. The waves of the Alley could crush her if she didn’t pay attention, but at least they never lied to her. Seeing her mother and sister always made the past rush upon her like a rogue wave.
The woman carrying the demon virus that infected Fynn bit into a cyanide pill as disciples rushed her. An investigation into who she was revealed nothing. The woman was homeless with no family, no ties to anyone. She was a perfect Trojan horse for a witch to send in poison. But what witch? What were the witch’s greater intentions? No one knew.
Fynn’s father, William the Story Keeper, set great bonfires. He sang for the trances that would reveal the truth of their ancestors. In the bad time of Fynn’s near death, the story fires carried nightmare visions, but no answers. The well of prophecy ran bone dry.
For two weeks, the entire Keep held its breath. Mother Brigid and Lia lay hands on Fynn throughout the long days and nights, growing exhausted, but never leaving her alone. They flooded her bloodstream, her bone marrow, every tissue and cell with the light of their power. When Fynn opened her eyes for the first time, she tasted honey on her tongue.
They celebrated. They dressed her in white and lifted her in a litter on their shoulders. She wore wreaths of purple flowers on her wrists and hair, the warmth of sunlight and the smell of the trees welcome and lovely after so many weeks in a world of cold nightmares. She looked down at her sister and mother, the disciples, and Komo, from her perch above their heads. She waited for the warmth of the sun to thaw her insides.
It never did.
After the demon virus, Fynn was not the same. She sat in corners, wrapped in blankets, even on warm days, a storm tangle in her head. She watched her sister wash dishes or study and Fynn’s hands twitched with the desire to slap her. Her mother’s voice had once sounded like music. Now Fynn fled to remote parts of the house to avoid hearing it. Their love had healed her, but it had not protected her. Everyone in the Keep was supposed to be held safe and everyone was. Everyone, except for her.
Her father, the Story Keeper, was the only person from the Keep she could stand back then, and he still was. After the bad healing, Fynn snuck out of the Keep after dinner, to spend every night in her father’s cabin. His story bonfires were the only fires that stopped her shivering. Her father was the only one who didn’t ask questions that she wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t tell anyone that she hated now. She didn’t want to say that with every passing morning, she more and more dreaded going back inside the walls of the Keep.
As she stood beside her father and watched embers die to ashes, Fynn’s faith in the story fires turned cold, as well. The prophecies were as useful as dogs that barked after the weasels had already ravaged the chicken house and left behind a pile of blood and feathers. The prophecies and stories taught them to live in fear, but did nothing to protect them.
Mother Brigid explained that when they drew her blood after the botched healing, they found a virus no one had seen before. She asked Fynn to tell her everything she saw in the nightmare visions. At first, Fynn tried, but talking about it felt like chewing sandpaper coated with broken glass.
“You must never lay hands again, Fynn,” Mother Brigid said, the sacred flame from the lamp shining in her eyes. She had called her daughters together in front of the kitchen hearth, her voice as low as thunder.
Fynn glared sidelong at Lia’s bowed head. As soon as her mother gave leave, she ran out through the garden to her father’s house. Only outside the walls could she less feel the weight of the filth she now carried in her veins.
She hadn’t wanted anyone to know that while her mother and sister had saved her life, they couldn’t entirely kill the demon germ inside her. Part of it remained. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be as happy and good as her sister. Lia had sat on Fynn’s couch the night before, like some kind of sequestered nun out in the big bad world. It was annoying as hell, but part of Fynn envied her sister. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be that pure.
Part of the demon virus had been inside of her since the day she’d touched the stinking woman in the meeting room. That was just the way it was.
“Behind you, Fynnie,” a gruff voice called. It was Randy, paddling by on her left. They nodded to each other, as he moved on. The other hardcore surfers were a rough group of people, some like Randy, with raw sores and jittery eyes that made her wonder about their drug use. Yet she watched him disappear in the fog with true respect, despite what his offshore activities were. A breeze blew the mist clear enough that she caught a glimpse of Randy swooping down a cliff-sized wave like a falcon. She whistled under breath. She loved how surfing made her forget everything else. She loved how sometimes men could be like gods.
Morning fog shrouded the world in silver. A strange splash turned her head. A high gray fin cut through the surface five yards away. She moved to her stomach, brought up her legs. A shark wouldn’t care if she were a seal, a woman, or an incarnation of a goddess. He’d take a bite out of her just the same and she was mortal enough to feel her heart racing. She looked into the water and met the blue eye of a Great White as it skimmed beneath her board, checking her out just inches below the surface.
Fynn lowered her head and powered through the water on strong arms toward the crest of a curling wave. She shot to her feet. Only on a wave could she hope to be fast enough to elude a shark. Suddenly, the entire universe was the spray off the wave, the water speeding beneath the board, the total concentration of her body, the rush of the wind past her ears.
Through the mist, a human voice howled. Alarm seized her in the second just before a guy zipped in front of her, cutting the water, and then disappearing into the fog as quickly as the shark fin. She cursed as her balance faltered. She zipped down the massive wave, gaining speed. A fall off the board now would mean serious pain, if not a broken neck. Beyond the roaring water, she heard a high-pitched laugh. She crouched lower to maintain her gravity and rode the wave toward the rocks.
No one cut her off and got away with it. Whoever it was, he was going to be sorry.
She glided into shore. Three men stood with their boards like sentinels on the rocky outcropping. Something strange about them kept the curses in her throat. The three strangers were big dudes with bodybuilder physiques bursting out of their wetsuits, but that wasn’t what bothered her. There was something off about them. They looked stupid, like models posing for an ad. Unnatural. The way they stared at her made her stomach lurch worse than the shark’s cold eye. She looked around and wished that a few of the regular crowd were closer by. A couple of those guys were convicted felons, real bruisers. They would be good in a fight.
The strangers watched her climb out of the water, silent, and still as big dolls. “Which one of you cut me off?” she asked. They tilted their heads, their expressions unmoving.
She hefted her board under her arm and moved toward them. They leapt onto further rocks, as though she were a magnet with an opposing charge. They laughed. She lunged for the big blond one, whom she was sure was the one who nearly knocked her off her board, but he skirted away from her touch like it was a game. They laughed again, the high-pitched clown giggling she’d heard in the fog. She shuddered, and not just from the cold water.
She left the strangers on the rocks and headed for the trail up the bluff. She heard before she saw one of them break rank and scramble up behind her. When she turned, he held up his hands, grinning, turquoise-colored eyes dancing under a shock of sun-bleached hair.
“Sorry, Ma’am,” he said. His face was broad, cheekbones and jaw chiseled out of stone. The top of his wetsuit folded over his backside, exposing raised gooseflesh over hard muscles.
Her mind flashed on the thought that this was a man who could inflict real pain. The Alley was a place where she was used to finding comfort, a sense of home. Her skin prickled with uneasiness, as though she had uncovered a nest of scorpions under her bed.
“You could have killed me on that wave,” she said. She calculated the distance to her truck. His eyes glinted in a hard way that made the glance from the shark seem kind.
“But I didn’t,” he said. He lowered his hands and laced them together in front of him in a mockery of politeness. He said nothing more, but watched from the bottom of the trail as she walked backwards away from him.
“Watch where you’re going,” he called. She gave him the finger and got out of there.
***
“The Center for Disease Control has issued a medical alert today, warning of a highly-contagious virus transmitted by casual contact that is plaguing primarily homeless teens in the San Francisco Bay Area. . .”
Fynn threw a boot at the radio and went back to loading plastic garbage bags with things from the Keep. It was time to say goodbye to the Triple Goddess statue with three women inseparably attached together, each facing a different direction. She removed the straw Brigid’s cross from the wall. All of the kale, flaxseed, and alfalfa from the refrigerator had to go, as well. She hadn’t lived at home for years, but she felt compelled to eat as though her mother ran her kitchen. It was time to cut the umbilical cord once and for all. Her taste buds would thank her for it.
Fynn took a shower, sluicing the salt from her skin and listened to one of her Komo playlists instead of the news. It was time to shake off the dread she felt since the three strangers wrecked her surfing morning. They were uncanny, it was the only word to describe them. The one with nearly-white hair had eyes that were beautiful turquoise, but dead of emotion. Suspicion tugged on the edg
e of her mind that the three strangers weren’t humans at all.
Fynn turned off the water. She didn’t have time to linger over the possibility of unhuman stalkers. She had a whole entire world of human beings to save in a human being, scientific sort of way. Fynn’s team at St. Cocha had discovered a new virus they called Hydra among a pack of homeless teenagers in the Bay Area. The radio news got that much of the story right. It killed the patients they couldn’t get to in time, but once they treated the rest, it was over. Hydravirus had a cure. Every virus had a cure. The public just didn’t know it yet.
Her mind danced back to the strange guys at the Alley. Demon or not, there was something not right about them. Just because you have chosen not to heed the prophecies, doesn’t mean they aren’t true. Well, true or not, the prophecies never did anything for anyone in the Keep, except to make sure they stayed scared and in the Keep. Besides, once those pretty weirdos cut off Randy or one of his friends in the middle of a wave, they wouldn’t get off as easy as somebody giving them the finger. They’d get an ass kicking that would make them pray for the mercy of sharks. Wave rage was a real thing at the Alley.
A breeze blew gauzy curtains into her bedroom now that not a single window in her entire house held a pane. She’d call for someone to come in to replace the glass while she was at work. Wrapped in a silk kimono, she went to the window facing the sea to breathe in the salty, living-thing smell of the ocean. Her mother had risked Fynn’s life to turn her into a killer. Instead, Fynn made a career outside the Keep of being a greater healer than her family could ever imagine. Her lab produced the Goddess Strain, and it was about to save millions of lives from diseases that once were death sentences.
A Monarch butterfly picked its way along the windowsill. It tottered on spindly legs, like a drunk girl, unbalanced by a bent wing. Fynn extended a finger. “Did a bird take a bite and spit you out?” she asked. The insect clung to her knuckle. “You must taste nasty.”
The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) Page 3
