The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  Fynn’s father told a story about a butterfly. In ancient Ireland, there was a girl so beautiful, that people called her The Fair. A jealous witch turned The Fair into a butterfly and set her adrift on the winds, until she finally fell into a glass of wine, and the way he told it, a handsome knight swallowed her. It was one of Fynn’s favorite stories when she was a kid. She liked it much better than the legions of demon armies marching on the apocalypse.

  A sea breeze jostled the insect, but it held to the mast of her finger. Homesickness tugged at Fynn’s heart, despite everything. She blew a gentle breath. The wing straightened. In a riot of orange applause, the butterfly flew away.

  Fynn took out the trash and went back inside. She then made waffles loaded with melted butter and real maple syrup. She sat at the roughhewn table her father had made. Maybe he could visit by himself. Or she could go see him in his cabin outside of the Keep. Damned if she was ever going back inside its walls again. If her mother and sister thought knowing the truth would make her return to the Keep, they were wrong. She never felt more separated from them, more on her own, than she did at this moment. She had to be her own mother and her own sister, too. I know you have decided not to heed the prophecies, but that doesn’t make them not true. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind, rankled her nerves anew. She’d never denied the prophecies; she just refused to let them rule her life. Besides, what did the prophecies say about a mother who sacrificed her own daughter to demon infection? If there were demons stirring, then Fynn would fight them alone.

  She dressed in her usual jeans, blouse, and blazer, to look somewhat professional for lecture. She twisted her impossible hair behind her head, letting a few tendrils hang out because that was what they were going to do anyway. It felt like the first day of school. The first day of a fresh start.

  By the porch, she noticed her mailbox gaped open, a long unsealed envelope hanging out of the end. She looked down the street, but there was no one there. It was two tickets to the Catalyst Club for a show that night. Ritual Madness, a Komo cover band, was playing. Komo - the great rock star...and her first and only love.

  Fynn puzzled over the glossy tickets, stamped with fresh ink. The Catalyst Club was a rundown seaside venue, but they were good seats. Close to the stage, on the floor. Too bad she hated Komo cover bands. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased until her phone vibrated in her purse. She didn’t recognize the number, so pressed end call. It went off again, this time ringing in the tune of Fire Arrow. Her stomach erupted in an entire flock of butterflies. No ring tone existed for Komo’s private love song written just for her.

  “Come to the show tonight,” he said when she answered. In the space of three seconds, his voice took over her whole body and then dropped her into silence. End call. Unknown number.

  “Where are you, Komo?” she said to the sky.

  An offshore breeze lifted her hair from her forehead, kissed the back of her neck. Fynn stretched her arms out from her chest, like wings, and prayed that Komo himself would appear and swallow her whole.

  7.The Rock Star

  Classic Dionysus music filled the Catalyst Club with the sound of gravel rolling in silk. Fynn’s friend, Cara, stood at the bar ordering sugary drinks with fancy names. Cara pushed a glass with a skinny straw into Fynn’s hand.

  “Drink with me,” she said. “To friendship. And last-minute amazing tickets. And did I mention friendship? I’m so glad you asked me to come here tonight.”

  Fynn raised her glass and took a sip. The pink fizzy thing went down like cold fireworks. Awful stuff. Fynn wrinkled her nose before downing the rest of it.

  “Tonight is going to be epic.” Cara kissed her cheek. “I’m the biggest Komo fan ever. I know everything about him.”

  “Everything?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m a stalker fan. Ask me anything you want to know.”

  “Where is he?” Fynn asked.

  Cara shook out her hair and laughed. “Maybe he’ll be here tonight,” she said. “The Legend of Komo is real.”

  Fynn didn’t answer. She ordered a couple of shots to hide her red face. Komo had disappeared in the middle of a tour for his second album. When the story broke, throngs of fans crowded the gates of his mansion in Los Angeles. He never showed. In fact, it had been over a year without any verified sign of him. His fame had risen higher in the past year, until he became a ghost, seen everywhere and nowhere. His fans stood vigil outside his gates. The Legend of Komo told that the rock star appeared at concerts of his own cover bands if they had talent or if there happened to be beautiful women in the audience. Cara Santos would have been prettier than any other woman in the crowd in the dumpy lab coat and messy braid she wore at their job in the St. Cocha University research center. Cara unleashed in high heels and a dress pouring down her hips like liquid gold was gorgeous enough to conjure the devil. The real Komo would love everything about Cara. Fynn knew that from experience.

  The brief phone conversation that morning, if she could even call it a conversation, was the first she had heard from him since they were at the Athenian School together. Five years. Fynn hoped he was on a private island somewhere. As a marketing ploy, it was brilliant, though it would have been killing him. Komo lived to perform for stadium crowds. He drank adoration like wine. The distant longing of desperate fans had to be a watered-down elixir. It could never be enough.

  Just thinking of Komo made Fynn’s stomach flutter like a greeting from a swallowed Fair. It didn’t matter that the last time she saw him, she was a lovesick, heartbroken teenager. The ear where she’d held her phone when he called still hummed with his voice.

  “That’s a sneaky smile,” Cara said. “What are you thinking about, gorgeous?”

  “Let’s go to our seats,” Fynn said. Komo was her swallowed secret that she kept deep inside. She never talked about him. Memories of Komo had a way of becoming sharp-edged and dangerous. Teenage romances weren’t supposed to last forever, especially when they were one-sided and both parties were in their twenties now. The fact that she hadn’t dated anyone since then just made the memory more of a holy relic than it ought to have been.

  Cara’s hair fell like dark water down her back as Fynn followed her toward the stage. If the real Komo did magically appear at the show, he would go straight for her friend Cara and Fynn would die of jealousy.

  “Are you comfortable?” Cara asked once they settled into their seats.

  “I am,” Fynn said. But she wasn’t. Her stomach had begun to hurt and she was cold.

  “You shivered,” Cara said. She slipped off the black and silver threaded angora sweater she wore over her gold dress. She took Fynn’s drink and set it down before guiding her arms through its webbing. Fynn pulled the sweater across her green slip dress. There wasn’t much to it, but she felt instantly better.

  “You know, you should let your legs show,” Cara said, pointing to the jeans and boots that Fynn wore under her dress. “You have an incredible body. You should show it more.”

  “I hate that feeling,” Fynn said.

  Cara raised her eyebrows. “You hate feeling sexy?”

  I hate feeling like I’m not ready for a fight. But it wasn’t something she could say out loud and hope a normal non-Keep person would understand. Komo never minded her jeans and boots. Every other girl who chased after him wore skimpy dresses, short skirts. She was never anything like those girls.

  Maybe that’s why he liked them. A quiet voice taunted inside her head. Before the demon infection, she didn’t know what jealousy felt like. After, she hated the girls who hung off him like fringe.

  “I wish I knew what you were thinking,” Cara said. “It’s like you’re on your own planet tonight.”

  Fynn started to apologize, when the lights dimmed and Ritual Madness took the stage. The drummer and the bassist came on first to thump out a rhythm. Then a young man with long brown hair strode across with a guitar slung across his shoulders. He almost had Komo’s swagger down.

&
nbsp; “My god, he’s hot,” Cara said.

  Fynn nodded, but privately disagreed. Compared to Komo, the man was a toadstool.

  His fingers plunked over his guitar strings. It was Angels, one of Fynn’s favorites from the first album, but only when Komo sang it. The crowd yelled and clapped in appreciation. Fynn wanted to holler, too, but out of indignation, not fan happiness.

  It’s just you and me running the streets in Angel Beat City. The Ritual Madness guy couldn’t sing. Without Komo’s voice, the lyrics weren’t poetry. They were just lame.

  Cara whistled. “He sounds just like Komo,” she yelled. She swayed to the music. Fynn tried to do the same, but it felt like dancing to a dirge.

  Then he picked out the first chords of something different. The melody was familiar, even if it sounded like the guy was playing it on a guitar made of tin.

  “This is a Komo song,” Fynn said.

  “I don’t think so,” Cara said. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “It’s Komo’s. He never put it on an album.”

  Cara tilted her head. Looked confused.

  You are my fire girl. . .

  This was Fynn’s song. He wrote it just for her. He never recorded it, but would only play it live, for her, during their year at the Athenian School. The song Fire Arrow was the only thing she had of his that she was never supposed to have to share. The Ritual Madness guitarist scraped over it, clearly without much practice. It was like watching someone rip the wings off a butterfly.

  Fynn ran to the bathroom. Fire Arrow followed in muted tones through the walls. She rinsed her mouth at the sink, hoping to stop wanting to puke. She peered into the scratched-up mirror. The dark kohl eyeliner Cara suggested she wear looked spooky, not sexy. Maybe she was just exhausted from so many late nights in the lab. Or maybe she was coming down with the flu for the first time ever. She heard that this was what it felt like.

  Fynn ripped out a paper towel to wipe her face. Her mother and sister would say the club wasn’t safe. They would say that demons lay in wait in big crowds. Look for the glowing eyes. Mother Brigid’s warning. Demons had the eyes of cats in the dark. It made them easy to spot, if you knew what to look for.

  “Demons don’t exist,” Fynn said into the mirror. It was fun to say, though it was a stinking lie. The sound of the band thump thumped through the walls. How in the hell did that stupid band know Fire Arrow?

  Fynn tugged at the shoulders of the scratchy sweater. She took a deep breath. It could have been that Komo had sold the rights to it. She shouldn’t have been hurt or even surprised. They hadn’t seen each other since he left Athenian to go on his first tour and she went off to St. Cocha for college. It had been five years since then. She was a professor, a lead researcher in immunology living her own life. As for Komo, he could have called her from anywhere. Maybe he really was on an island somewhere far away.

  On Fynn’s way out of the bathroom, another little earthquake ran up her spine. She didn’t know why she felt so cold. She shivered while she smiled in response to Cara’s concerned look.

  Then the room changed.

  Fynn’s skin reddened, as though she were sinking into a hot tub of rose water. Heat bloomed in her belly from an intoxication that did not come from the candy-tasting bar drinks.

  She clutched Cara’s arm. “Komo is here,” she said.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Cara said.

  Fynn didn’t have time to argue. She fished through her bag for mint gum. Her breath tasted rank. She ran her fingers through her hair. Komo loved its shiny coppery bronze. At Athenian, he sat behind her in class, so he could wind it into little braids. A whole group of the girls dyed their own hair red, hoping for the same, but not one got even close to Fynn’s color of metals moving through fire.

  Heat spread across her shoulders. It snaked around her throat. She wasn’t over Komo. She could still feel his fingers in her hair, tugging at her scalp. The back of her neck tingled with the memory of the sensation of his breath so close to her skin.

  “You’re crazy,” Cara yelled over the band.

  But Fynn wasn’t crazy. Komo was in the building. She knew this the way she knew her own heart beat in her chest. To prove it, the music screeched in a train crash of missed notes as a man taller than any of the other guys walked on from the side. He was tall and broad-shouldered, almost too big to be a human man. Surely too beautiful.

  It was Komo. Fynn’s Komo, striding across the stage in faded denim and an old t-shirt. A leather ribbon tied his long hair back. He did not look up at first. He just studied the neck of his guitar, as if he ever needed to watch what he was doing when he played his music.

  The audience rose in a wave. He grinned at everybody, as if he was surprised to see them there. They screamed as he nodded his great head like a lion shaking his mane. Fynn was pushed up to the stage by a tsunami of crazed fans.

  The Ritual Madness guitar player twiddled away even clumsier than before, but Komo still bowed to the band with respect. He stepped to the microphone. Fynn wanted to close her eyes to truly enter the music, but she didn’t want to miss looking at him. It had been so long since she could just look at him.

  “Goddess of fire, goddess of my life. . . .” He growled into the microphone, like he wanted to eat it. There was only Komo, there was only ever Komo. The music lifted Fynn from the floor. The music lifted her from everything. Komo’s long brown fingers played a lazy game over the chords, but his eyes darted across the crowd beyond the stage lights.

  Then his eyes landed. He saw her. He sang her name around a smile like the rising sun.

  Cara’s fingernails dug into Fynn’s shoulder. “He just said your name. I swear to God, Komo just said your name right out loud.”

  Fynn kept her eyes locked on her old friend Komo. They were at least that, old friends. Two of the same, strange kind.

  Komo howled in ecstasy and the crowd answered. He bounced around the stage on the balls of his feet, as if on springs. Komo’s guitar wailed along, a whole other voice with a soul and will all its own. Everyone in the club at that moment thought that Komo was their personal rock god. Their faces lit up in true abandon. Even as she danced, Fynn’s heart dipped in a sweet ache because Komo made everybody feel special. Komo made everyone think he was singing for a private audience. Music critics wrote about it, but nobody could explain it. Komo had a magical effect.

  Fynn finally closed her eyes. She let the tenderness of Komo’s voice carry her away from the bounds of reason. Her heart broke to pieces all over again, but that was always the sacrifice that she bore to hear him play.

  And it was worth it. It was so worth it.

  8. The Limo

  The music took Fynn back to when she loved Komo. It took her back to when Komo was her own private emperor god, ruler of her happiness and her heart.

  At first, he had been her protector. Two years after the demon infection, Fynn huddled alone under the eaves of an abandoned mini mall in the rain. A black SUV veered into the crumbling parking lot. Water seeped into her worn boots as she tried to run. The Keep disciples caught her before she made it to the street.

  In the van, they plied her with hot cocoa and soft blankets around her shoulders. Rain dripped from the ends of her hair onto the leather seat. Hunger cramps seized her stomach at the smell of the milk chocolate, but she begged the disciples to let her go. Let her go. Tell her mother to pretend she was dead, have another daughter, and remake the Three that way. She would never stop running.

  From the back seat, a low, rumbling voice began a familiar song of praise to the goddess. Goddess of the Three, come to me. Fynn bent her head, shaking. Komo encircled his arms around her from behind. He murmured into her ear. It was going to be okay. Mother Brigid was letting them go away to school together. They had each other now.

  Komo held her on the long drive to the Athenian School in the north. He clasped her hand as they entered the school’s grand doorway, and he stayed by her side in the commons as they waited for their ro
oms. Students surrounded them in the communal space, staring and whispering among themselves.

  They are so beautiful, the other students said. Some of them were incarnations of the Divine, as well, but none as famous as the children of Dionysus and Brigid. They were celebrities in the school from that first night, until Fynn’s sullen rebuffs turned everyone away. She did her schoolwork. She even excelled in her studies, but she only wanted to hang out with Komo. She didn’t care if anyone understood or not.

  Komo and Fynn met after classes in the surrounding redwood forest, where he played on his acoustic guitar the new music he was working on for an album. They kissed under the trees and made plans for where they would go after graduation. Mother Brigid wanted Komo to ignore the Hollywood music producers calling to offer him studio recordings and world tours. She said the business would corrupt his gift.

  “Your mother told me that I have to be careful because of what happened to my father,” Komo said while he played, his notes rising to the tops of the trees. “She says addictions run in my family.”

  But Komo and Fynn decided together that they would ignore Mother Brigid’s warnings. They were going to move to L.A., live by the sea in Venice. He would make his albums, but he wouldn’t let them take his soul, as Mother Brigid warned him. He would have Fynn there to help him stay strong. Fynn would take care of him. He would respect Mother’s wishes and he would stay innocent, they both would. They would live together and make music and art and love. Everyone would love them and they would forget about the story fires and the demon hordes forever.

  On the last day of school, Fynn tramped along the trail under the redwood canopy. Komo said to meet him at the amphitheater and she was breathless. She’d found a patch of windflowers on the way, purple daisies that looked like anemones growing in the meadow. They were a symbol of her family and she’d made a necklace of them for Komo to wear. Stringing the blooms together made her late and she ran the last stretch of the path straight into the amphitheater - only to find Komo on the stage straddled by a girl from their art history class, his pants around his thighs, the girl moaning.