Eligos panted as he changed back into a human form. He caught his reflection in the car window then looked away. This weakness and self-loathing couldn’t last. He had to regain who he was before he had shaken hands with the goddess. Her witchery would wear off soon. He would be a killer again.
He meant to tell himself this as a comfort. Instead, he shivered in horror at the thought.
15. The Bus
The truck almost skidded off the shoulder before Fynn righted the wheel. She thumbed her phone while she drove. Komo. Cate. Cara. No one was answering. She envisioned a demon horde, burning rubble, a house filled with blood. She called 911, but when the operator answered, she hung up. She didn’t know what to report. Two demons are gunning for my boyfriend. You’ll know it’s them because one of them has eyes like a swimming pool and the other one only has one hand.
Fynn tore into the driveway, gravel spitting from under the squealing tires. She slammed on the brakes to keep from rear-ending a moving van parked at the end. She jumped out and ran to the house. All the lights were on, the doors and windows open. Idling vehicles lined the driveway. Two moving vans, three buses, a limousine.
Cate stood at the kitchen, blasting instructions into her phone “Leave your truck here,” she said when Fynn walked in. “You’re packed and ready to go. He’s waiting for you in the back of the first bus.”
Fynn could barely feel her body. She moved through the bustling household like a disoriented ghost. Groupies bustled around the house cleaning, folding linens, packing food, herbs and tea. They talked to each other in excited voices, their hair pulled back into ponytails and buns to keep it out of the way of work. They chattered about a world tour, in breathless listings of cities. Paris. New York. Oh my God we’re going to New York.
Fynn climbed the stairs to the tower room. The bed was made tight as a hotel bed, the candles and incense were gone. Someone called her name from downstairs. The motorcade below began to move. Vehicles were already peeling off from the line.
“You okay?” Cate appeared in the doorway, her phone buzzing in her hand. “We got a string of last minute dates, Fynn. Isn’t that great? We have to hit the road, baby. It’s all starting now.”
Fynn looked down at the ruined borrowed blouse, the torn skirt, and her bare feet. Her clothes reeked of charred flesh and sulphur. Cate didn’t ask questions. “Take a quick shower and change your clothes, Fynn,” she said. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Komo is waiting for you.” She started talking into the phone while she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. While confirming a venue in Milan, Cate came out and slid open the closet door. Inside the otherwise empty space hung Fynn’s favorite pair of faded jeans, her softest cotton shirt dress, and her boots. As Cate clipped down the stairs again, Fynn entered the warm spray and tried not to think. She showered and dressed as fast as she could, the demon threat as faded as a bad dream. The only real danger was that Komo and the Nine he would surely be saving for them would ride off without her.
When she went outside, only the bus remained. The cold air chilled her wet head. Fynn climbed the dark bus stairwell knowing that she would have to think of a way to thank Cate. For an earthly woman with no notion of the true dangers Fynn and Komo faced, she managed to be a perfect mother to both of them. It had to be Divine inspiration to know to get them out of town at just this moment. Fynn would suspect Mother Brigid had something to do with it except that if that were the case they wouldn’t be heading for a glittering concert tour. They would be headed one way only, down the road to the Keep.
Komo’s legs stuck out from behind the purple curtain in the back. Dread struck Fynn as she walked past the empty seats. She was terrified that he was there with one of the girls. Behind the curtain she straddled his hips, her hair falling in his face, her hands on his chest. Fynn ripped aside the curtain.
But it was just Komo. Only Komo. He lay back on huge, plush pillows, and he smiled at her with a satisfied, blissful grin. He held a silver box in his giant-sized palm, its popped top uncovering two heart-shaped pills. She climbed his long body, curled up under his arm and felt like crying with relief.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Open your mouth.”
She did as he said. He placed a tablet on his tongue and then flicked it onto hers. He popped the remaining dose of Nine into his own mouth and wrapped his arms around her. She thought she should tell him about the Mayhem demons, about the terrible danger that hunted her. But the engine rumbled beneath them as the driver followed the caravan toward the freeway. They would be driving all night, the world passing outside the windows while she and Komo slept in the luxurious bed covered in silk blankets and down pillows. The demons would never find them here. Fynn fell into sleep, her exhausted body and mind slipping down through a thickening mist of Nine that was everything she ever wanted, that told her not to worry because Komo loved her.
The Nine told her everything she wanted to hear.
16. The Witch’s Promise
Cain stared at the fat profit spreadsheets on his computer, but did not see them. The donor party at St. Cocha University was sickening. The chancellor was a sycophant of the worst kind, a money grubbing vole of a woman. Yet he clapped along with everyone else when she praised the Kildares.
Then when he scraped the courage from the farthest corners of his heart to approach Fynn unveiled, she called him a murderer. She insulted him and he had to stand and take it.
She had no idea how powerful he was. Her ignorance was one of his few solaces. She would grovel in shame for it the day she understood how much she was going to need him. His patience for that day was thinner than ever before.
He drummed his fingers on his desk. His mother and brothers crowded his office, stinking of sulphur and expensive perfume. “We should move now, Mother,” Cain said. “Everything is in place. Waiting any longer is risky.”
“It’s too soon,” his mother said. “Be patient.”
He yearned for Fynn to the point that he didn’t sleep anymore. He lay in bed in a hot sweat, her gorgeous face all he could see. He could almost feel the satin of her skin under his hands but when he reached for her in the dark he was, as always, alone.
“You must all learn to wait,” Mother said, her teeth bared. “We could lose everything.”
“I don’t know how you can fear that,” Cain said, choosing his words like footsteps over a minefield.
Mother grabbed the back of Cain’s neck and started massaging. He controlled the urge to run from her touch. He concentrated on his breathing. His heart rate must remain absolutely regular or she would detect it. Nothing fed her cruelty more than fear.
“Your brothers are idiots,” she said. “Don’t make the same mistake.” The points of her fingernails punctured his skin. She dug into the nerves running down his arms and along the sides of his body. He cried out because he could not help it. She clutched harder until blue spots danced in front of his eyes. He slid off the chair to his knees.
When she released him, blood ran down his neck and wetted the starched collar of his dress shirt. He would have to change after she left before any employees saw the blood. Residual pain zinged down the pathways of his nerve endings. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the worst of it to pass. It always passed. He could count at least on that.
His brothers laughed at his weakness. They would have been able to fight back if she tried the same thing on them. They had spent an unbelievable amount of time in Hell. He couldn’t imagine three minutes, let alone the three years his brothers spent conscious only of a place too awful to be imagined. His mother’s magic brought them back to life, but they weren’t human anymore. They came back crazy as shit cans and stronger than their mother.
Any questions they had about the limits of the Witch Mother’s power over her newly minted demon sons were answered. They disobeyed her. They went after Fynn when she said to hold back and wait. She had forbid them to attack any member of the Triple Goddess until she’d said the word.
But they did as they pleased. Cain didn’t know whether to be amused or terrified.
“I could kill you,” Cate said, patting Cain on the head. “No one would miss you. Certainly not Fynn.”
Eligos yawned. “Mother, Cain is no use to us dead.”
Cain’s flesh crawled. He would never get used to insect voices of his brothers since their return. Eligos’ lumpy and swollen face opened into a mouth full of serrated teeth.
Mother stood a bit straighter and her smile grew even colder if that was possible. “He is of little use to us alive,” she said. “Eligos, collect yourself before someone sees you.”
Eligos stood up straight, suddenly again a man. They were just as strong in their human form as in the shapes they took as demons. They took pleasure in the shape shifting only because they knew how grotesque they were and they liked it. Cain wished he had thought to lock the door before his family came to visit. Not that a lock would have kept them out.
Each time his mother got pregnant, she gave birth with the help of Keep midwives. She disguised herself as a bohemian free spirit. He had memories of her hair long, her sweet public smile. Alone with her children, she showed no trace of love. She birthed them with the sole purpose of defeating the Triple Goddess. She explained it to Cain when they took over the company and renamed it Cain Pharmaceuticals.
People who returned from Hell were never able to enter the place where they were born. If the Mayhem brothers tried to enter the Keep walls, they would explode into flames. Even if they didn’t succeed in killing the goddesses, at least they would drive them to seek safety within the Keep walls. “Let the rats die in their hole,” Cain’s mother had said. “We’ll do what we please in the rest of the world.”
Cain glanced up and caught Eligos staring at him. Cain lowered into his swivel chair and pretended to do work at the computer. His youngest brother freaked him out even before he was a demon. He was the best looking, with his movie star face and corn silk hair. Eligos’ father was of pure human blood, unlike the rest of them sired by different demon tinged fathers. Cate liked crazy men. Yet it was Eligos’ purity that made him the most dangerous of the three after returning. The corrupted pure human was much more vicious than the offspring of a witch and a demon.
Even as a little boy, Eligos had an insane penchant for kindness. Nothing their mother did could make him hate her. In the Keep he would bring her bouquets of those stupid purple daisies, and weep as she crushed them in her fist. Since his Return, his hatred for everything living emanated from him like poison. Being in a room with Eligos was like being in the company of a live atomic warhead.
Eligos stretched across one of the couches and rested his muddy shoes on the cushions. He had returned to his human form, an ugly process to watch. The return to human looked like an old balloon deflating then shrinkwrapping itself against a human skull. Amon was not so human-looking anymore even in his restored form. He sulked in the corner, clutching his arm where Fynn had burned him. Now one brother was gone, killed by nothing more than an embrace to hear Eligos tell it. Amon lost a hand and was even stranger than before. Because of the attack in the woods, the goddesses would know the kind of monsters they had to fight. The old Story Keeper would have them pegged for Mayhem demons by now. The remaining brothers no longer had the cover of surprise.
“Because you disobeyed me, we lost the strength of the three brothers,” Mother said.
“You and your numbers,” Eligos said. “The number doesn’t matter.” His human voice was young and pleasant, his jaw as loose as the surfers he hung out with before he underwent the change.
“The numbers do matter. You must control yourselves and wait until I tell you to act,” the Witch Mother said. “Your reward will come, I promise you.”
Cain envied his brothers. It was their strength that he coveted. They had more strength than any human being could ever imagine possessing. Enough to make their mother cower. Cain would have loved to know what that felt like, to not live in fear of the witch.
“You will get your chance with the Triple Goddess soon,” she said. “You can start with the youngest and work your way up.”
Cain clenched his teeth. Not the youngest. She’d promised the youngest to him. He had to remember that everything his mother said to his brothers was a lie. Her promise to let him have Fynn was a secret. His mother said that his brothers wouldn’t understand and he knew she was right about that. Yet the fact that they had gone after her alone made Cain know that he needed to move fast.
“Soon she will be weak and unable to do to you what she did to Amon and Sam,” Mother said. “Then you’ll kill her.”
Eligos rolled his eyes. “She’d be dead now if I wanted her dead,” he said. He drew a long knife from the inside pocket of his jacket. The rusty blade was beveled with three ridges and came down do a point that at one time many centuries ago maybe was sharp.
“Daemonium, yes. But she’s more powerful than you think,” she said.
“And I’m more powerful than you think,” Eligos said. He grabbed her hand. Amon moaned from the corner. Eligos pinned her arm behind her back and held the daemonium point to her neck.
Mother smiled. Eligos wrenched her arm further and the pain seemed to make her even happier. He pushed her away, spitting at her feet.
“All in due time,” Mother said, rubbing her arm. She was in lighter spirits now. “You’ll have your fun Eligos, you’ll see. Trust me, my son. I know what you are. Give me a little more time and I’ll serve her to you on a silver platter.”
“No more time,” Eligos said. He slammed the door when he and Amon left. Their footsteps were heavy as drumbeats down the hall.
“As soon as they serve their purpose, they’re gone,” Mother said. Cain dabbed under his collar with a handkerchief. Half-moons of flesh hung off his neck like tiny flags.
Cain nodded. Despite her punishments, he was the one in Mother’s favor. He was always the favorite one, the one chosen to run the empire after the collapse. Ever since he was a boy, she wove stories in his ear, a spider mother with sticky webs. She painted pictures in his mind of him at the head of an enormous company and this had already happened. Soon after they unleashed the Hydravirus, he would be president of the most powerful country in the world and he would rule it like a king. He would stand on the burning corpses of his brothers and he would have anything he wanted in the world.
“You promised them Fynn,” Cain said.
“I promise a lot of things,” she said. “Do as I say. You’ll be rewarded, too.”
Cain looked down at his fingers, the nails bitten to the quick. She had promised him these things if only she did what he said. In reward for his obedience he would get the life of a sultan’s dreams. He would get anything he wanted.
All he wanted was Fynn.
The computer went dark. She came up behind him. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had a forked tongue. “Soon they’ll bow before you,” she said. “They’ll call your name. You will be able to have whatever or whomever you want. Even Fynn Kildare, if that earth pig is your desire.”
The thought comforted him. He knew about waiting. He knew more than his mother could ever imagine. The sooner they could get the apocalypse on the road, the happier he would be. The sooner he would get to start living a real life, instead of as an evil parasite living off of humankind’s doomed future. It was only a matter of waiting.
She moved to the window overlooking the factory. The assembly line churned pills nonstop, getting ready for the moment when they unleashed Hydravirus and the world’s wealthiest people would give up anything for the cure. She watched the manufacturing with a hungry smile.
He yearned for her to leave his office. She would eventually. He only had to wait.
17. The Four Scorpions
A cool winter moon rose over a stadium in the middle of America where Komo’s fans swarmed to their seats, or searched in vain for scalpers in the parking lots. Anyone who had a ticket wanted in to the show. A scalped ticket would g
o for ten times the regular price. Still the unlucky ones lingered on the streets, hoping to catch a snippet of Komo playing live over the walls.
Fynn loved the hours before Komo went onstage because it was the space of time when she had to share him the least. Komo liked to keep her right beside him so that he could rest his head in her lap while he talked to Cate about the business side of things. He liked to hold her hand and play out chords on the inside of her arm.
A crowd crushed into the tiny dressing room, every hanger-on feeling entitled to be there, no one conceding. World famous journalist Mary Daniels had asked to interview him, and Komo indulged that. The woman bustled through with her cameraman, her crew and their microphones and lights. The celebrity ordered languid groupies to move off the counters of the dressing tables so she could have the space to set up the interview as if Komo were the one who should be honored by Mary Daniels’ attention to him.
Cate caught Fynn’s eye and they shared a smirk. Komo lifted thousands of people to ecstasy every night. He transformed their lives with his music. Mary Daniels was the same as every other groupie, a mere fart on the human timeline while Komo was descended from a god.
Komo reclined shirtless on velvet pillows and ate from bunches of grapes as the woman chattered. She smelled like powder and hair dye and her smile was a mask. She had so many questions. Were the reports true that someone had auctioned their tickets online to the sold out concert at The Vine for a million dollars? What did he think about such excess in these hard economic times?
The record company had just announced Komo’s appearance at a grand re-opening of the old-school rock and roll venue the Vine Theater in San Francisco. They would be there in two weeks to conjure the spirit of Dionysus and the other rock gods that came before young Komo. He shrugged his massive shoulders so that his muscles rippled under his bare skin. Of course he ripped his shirt off right before the cameras started rolling. Komo could never resist a bit of theater.
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