The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, spit foaming at the sides of her mouth.

  Mother Brigid did not answer.

  “Don’t do it,” William said from the front seat.

  “Quiet now,” Mother Brigid said. Fynn did not know whether she was talking to her or to William. She rested her face against her mother’s shoulder. Her mother held her like a baby and Fynn felt the poison leave her system as if it were air escaping a punctured tire.

  “Praise the Goddess,” Fynn said, as fervent and full of love as a convert.

  ***

  Fynn and her mother lay in beds in front of a roaring fireplace in one of the Keep’s healing rooms. Her mother lay quiet. Fynn tried to touch her back but her reach fell short.

  A young disciple came by and felt Fynn’s forehead.

  “Who are you?” Fynn asked.

  “Jana. I’m your nurse tonight.”

  “What is wrong with us?” Fynn asked.

  “Mother Brigid healed you of addiction,” she said. “Now you both need to recover.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “She is. It was a bad idea. She should have let you gut it out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fynn said.

  “You know addictions are bad healings. They take forever to get over.”

  “I know.” She’d be apologizing forever.

  “You shouldn’t have let her do it,” the girl said. She felt under Fynn’s jaw and then took her pulse. Her hair was woven in a pattern of intricate braids, her arms laced with dark blue tattoos. Her mother surrounded herself with these acolytes, trained them to be nurses and doctors and midwives. They never talked back and they never ran away. They were perfect daughters.

  “I am sorry,” Fynn said again, full of regret though she knew she didn’t have the strength to stop her mother from anything she wanted to do.

  “Can you try to sleep?” the disciple asked.

  Fynn closed her eyes, but it was a long time before she could.

  ***

  Fynn rested in the healing room after laying hands on the woman infected with demon virus. It felt like she had cold iron rods wedged into her spine, between her collarbones, in the spaces between her ribs. They were tearing her apart. She had to remain on her stomach because the skin on her back tore away from itself as the flesh-eating demon virus ravaged her body.

  Fynn wished for death.

  “Let me die,” she said as the doctors tried injecting her with interferon. Death was there, crouching in the shadows beside the hearth. Its eyes glowed in the reflection of the fire.

  Her mother and sister chanted in Gaelic. Mother Brigid enveloped Fynn in her arms so that Fynn had felt that her mother was the whole earth expanded and wrapping itself around her, a treasured daughter. The healing light flowed through her mother’s hands until the pain disappeared.

  Fynn’s ears filled with the shrieking of demons as they disappeared, too, down a long and faraway tunnel.

  ***

  The dreams and memories dissipated. An overwhelming love and tenderness for her mother flowed from Fynn’s brittle heart.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  Mother Brigid nodded, her eyes at half-mast.

  “I know you do, Fynn,” she said. She had new lines around her eyes that deepened when she smiled.

  “Is it the daemonium that has made you tired?” Fynn asked. They never needed recovery after healing human illnesses no matter how terrible. Only addictions and demon sicknesses required recovery.

  Brigid shrugged one shoulder under the quilt. “Those wounds healed swiftly. I didn’t start feeling sick until I soaked up your addiction.”

  The Nine. “I’m free?”

  “You are free.”

  Fynn never remembered seeing so much white in her mother’s hair.

  “I won’t leave again, Mom,” she said.

  Mother Brigid patted Fynn’s thin back. “Please remember this, daughter. The time is coming very near when our power will be revealed and the people will need us.”

  “Mom. Can’t we just talk?” Fynn took a lock of her mother’s hair and twisted it around her finger. She wanted to share what she had been through. She wanted her mother to understand about her life. She thought of Komo, and burned to tell her mother how it felt to stand on the stage and listen to him sing. She wanted her to know how he could move an audience of ten thousand people with the plucking of a single string on his guitar.

  Her mother pulled Fynn close. “You think you are in love.”

  “I am in love,” Fynn said.

  “Promise me you won’t cleanse him of his addiction,” Mother said. “Healing addictions weakens us. Especially of this Nine. This is a demon drug, Fynn. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “I am sorry,” Fynn said. Her mother pushed her hair from her face and kissed her forehead.

  “Komo needs to get well on his own. The world can’t afford to have weak gods now.”

  “I’ll bring Komo to The Keep,” Fynn said. She yawned and found a cool place on her pillow to rest her cheek.

  “You stay. We’ll send for him. He’ll know he’s welcome. If he comes on his own, we can help him.”

  Fynn basked in the glow of the fire. She played her fingers across the place on her neck where she should have been mortally wounded by the daemonium blade. The skin was tight with scar tissue.

  “Go to sleep, Fynn,” her mother whispered. She began to sing in her native language, a Gaelic lullaby that Fynn had not heard since she was a child.

  Lia came in while Fynn dozed in a half sleep. She sat on the foot of the bed and Fynn felt as though she had never left home. Komo would be able to rest here. Komo would come to the Keep. He had to. Mother Brigid and Lia were right. Fynn needed to stay with her mother and sister, because together they were the Three, stronger than any force from earth or Hell. They were stronger than human vice, stronger than evil and selfishness and fear. Together they were elemental. Together they were life itself.

  ***

  Fynn woke to a hard rapping on the door. Brigid stirred beside her on the bed. Lia stood at the door, letting in Jana and Dr. Sullivan in his white lab coat and scrubs.

  “There is a crisis in the Oaks Center,” Dr. Sullivan said. Mother Brigid sat up. She winced as she rubbed at her lower back.

  “What is it?” Lia asked.

  “An outbreak in the infant ward,” he said. He ran a hand over his face as though to stave off panic. “It looks...dammit. I don’t know how to even say this.”

  “Colm,” Mother Brigid said. Her voice gathered storm clouds. “Speak.”

  “Yes, of course. It looks demon in nature to me, Brigid. It looks like Hydravirus.”

  Mother Brigid threw off the covers. She stood, tottered, and held out her arm for Lia to balance her.

  “Mom. Don’t go,” Lia said. Her command was so strong that Fynn expected their mother to turn around and get back into the bed. But she only paused for a second. Sadness blew through Fynn like a cold wind. Lia grabbed Fynn’s hand and she knew that she had felt it, too.

  Fynn clutched her mother’s sleeve with both fists. “Stay here,” she said.

  “Listen to your daughters,” Dr. Sullivan said. “There would be nothing you could do short of a hands-on Healing, and that would be risky for you right now. You probably couldn’t get there in time anyway.” He shook his head. “The damned thing is so fast moving.”

  Mother Brigid gestured for Jana to help her. She gave orders to have her clothes brought and a car and driver prepared.

  “I’m coming, too,” Lia said.

  “No,” Mother Brigid replied. She pushed Lia down so hard on the bed that her teeth clacked together.

  She ran from the room with Jana in tow and Dr. Sullivan filling her in with details from behind. Mother Brigid was like a freight train. She was unstoppable. She was stronger than a freight train.

  “She’s like a tornado,” Lia said.

  “An earthquake,” Fynn replied.

&nbs
p; “A tsunami.”

  “Everything we are naming is destructive,” Lia said quietly. She moved to the fireplace. “That isn’t fair.”

  Fynn shed her nightdress and pulled on the linen pants and cotton tunic Jana had left for her by the bed. “Dr. Sullivan wanted her to go,” she said. “You could tell.”

  “She shouldn’t have,” Lia said. “She forgets sometimes that she isn’t invincible.”

  “How human are we?” Fynn asked. She felt under the bed for boots, hoped Jana knew her size.

  “We are human enough,” Lia said. She wasn’t in the same hurry. She poked at the fire with a stick from the hearth. “We can get hurt. We can die - and so can she.”

  “We’re going with her,” Fynn said. “Come on.”

  “Try the door and see what happens,” Lia said. She didn’t move from the fireside. Her face was impassive though her eyes were sad.

  “You’re kidding me. You won’t come with me? You’re so afraid to leave the Keep that you won’t go out even to protect our mother?”

  “Try the door,” Lia said.

  Fynn touched the doorknob and it burned her like a hot iron. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and tried to turn it but it would not move. Then the door threw out a hard wave of energy like a thunderclap. Fynn covered her ears.

  Lia watched, shook her head. Looked back into the fire. “When she’s too far away to catch up with we’ll be able to leave the room,” she said.

  “What the hell?”

  “Lately she doesn’t have time to explain the things she does.” Lia shrugged. She looked like another disciple with her braids and her tattoos. “Sometimes she does goddess tricks to get her way.”

  Fynn looked around for something to break down the door. “She needs us. She needs me. There are demons out there. It’s worse than you know.”

  “The mother love is wearing off in you already, little sister. She has good reason for wanting us to stay. She’ll be back tonight and perhaps she’ll explain then.”

  “This is bullshit,” Fynn said.” I don’t know how you take it.”

  “I take it,” Lia said. “And so should you. She wanted us to stay behind for a reason, Fynn. I would have obeyed and stayed behind. Obviously, you wouldn’t have or she wouldn’t have locked us in.”

  “Hell no I wouldn’t have stayed,” Fynn said. “It’s crazy out there and I should know. I’ve been living in the world for seven years while you’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons behind the walls.”

  “Dungeons and what?”

  Fynn felt like screaming. “She can get hurt out there,” she said. She tried to sneak up on the door but an invisible force pushed her back with a percussive shove. “This isn’t a game, Lia.”

  “I know this isn’t a game. You’re the one playing around with your Ph.D. in immunology, acting like it’s some big honor to be Komo’s girlfriend.”

  “I’m his bodyguard,” Fynn said. It only seemed silly when she talked about it. What she and Komo had was real. They understood each other. They needed each other.

  “Well, turns out the bodyguard needed a bodyguard,” Lia said. She dragged another chair to the hearth. “Come on, Sister. Let’s not fight. We’re stuck here anyway. Let’s talk and pass the time. Then we will both feel better.”

  Fynn shook her head. She had lived too long on her own to be bossed around about which doors she could and could not go through. She didn’t want to sit and talk like nothing was happening. She tried the door again and it opened as though nothing was ever wrong. The doorknob was cool and smooth.

  “That would not have been necessary if she thought you would have obeyed,” Lia said.

  “How can you constantly obey?” Fynn said. “Isn’t there anything you would rather be doing than following Mom’s orders?”

  Lia tilted her head. “But it’s not about me,” she said.

  A disciple rushed in, impervious to anything but the work of the Keep. “A new birthing, Lia,” she said. “We need you.” Lia brushed off her hands and followed the disciple out.

  Despite the danger on the outside, someone new was being born. Fynn had heard that there were many new births in the Keep these days. So many new families. They’d knocked down a wall and built a new one to widen the compound and accommodate rows of new dwellings. They were small cottages like houses out of a storybook filled with people who had come to Mother Brigid’s commune begging for the chance to obey her.

  Fynn went out of the healing room. She would walk around, survey the grounds. Wait for her Mother to come home as though she weren’t terrified that she would not. Fynn shivered, despite the warmth in the main house. The demon that had nearly killed her at Komo’s house was still loose. He said he’d killed the one called Eligos. She hoped he had been telling the truth.

  As for her mother, there was no use going after her. With magic that strong, she’d never get out of the gate. She would try to start a car and the engine would seize. Trees would fell themselves on the road to block her path.

  She walked to the eastern wall. It was made of thick adobe, cool and smooth under her fingers. She craned her neck to see the top, fifty feet above her head. Her mother wasn’t safe on the other side of it. She shouldn’t have been out there alone.

  A group of children ran to say hello. They encircled her like a ring of fresh-faced daisies. She touched a little girl’s cheek. People in the Keep thought she was royalty. In fact, she was a wild and exotic bird trapped inside the walls, already thinking of how she could fly over them and be free.

  21. The Healing

  He sensed her coming long before she arrived. His ears were raw as if subjected to the wail of a thousand alarm sirens at their loudest pitch, yet the only noise was the respirator hooked up to the small child on the bed. The daemonium blade he carried in his pocket weighed heavy.

  Eligos had tried to keep Amon from going after Fynn, but his brother was tired of excuses. Amon turned on him with the dull blade, sinking it into Eligos’ side. Blood poured from the wound like a spigot. He had lost consciousness for a few hours. When he came to, his wound had regenerated and his brother crouched beside him.

  “The Mother came for her,” Amon growled.

  Eligos had pretended to rage, but inside he felt something close to a memory of joy. Fynn was safe. His own witch mother was stupid, a fact he realized since his Return. He had already known that she was narcissistic and cruel, but her stupidity was news to him. He had always seen her as more than human. She could conjure spells and make people do what she wanted. She was beautiful as a classic movie actress and could appear kind when she wanted something.

  As her child, he would have died for her. And then he did.

  First, however, he killed for her. He killed an innocent young girl dressed in pink organza for her fifteenth birthday. Her family had thrown a big party in a hotel in a poor Central Valley town along the highway. Eligos snatched her in the hall and dragged her into one of the rooms. He made it quick that she did not suffer. His brothers had demon fathers. Before he was a demon, Eligos’ pure human genetics had made him the softest in the family. He wept as she bled into her pink dress.

  Since his return, his broken humanity made him the strongest. At least, he had been the strongest before the youngest goddess caught his hand and made him into something else.

  In the hospital room, the child’s hands rested on the blankets. They were like fat blind starfish, the fingers tucked in and pink. Those little hands gripped crayons and made drawings for her mother and drew hearts and picked flowers. His chest burned, a literal pain that he suffered constantly since Fynn had touched him at the university donor party. Since touching Fynn just that once his human soul and demon nature had been tearing apart the muscle and tissue that was his heart. He did not know how long he could hold on before he found a way to kill himself and end it forever.

  The Mother Goddess approached. She was in a moving vehicle, getting close. He felt her like an animal feels the far off rumble of a tsunami l
ong before it hits the beach. His thighs twitched with the impulse to run to high ground. His weakness was not lifting as he had hoped. It was getting worse. It was a cancer.

  Eligos and his brothers were supposed to defeat the Triple Goddess. Their mother had told them it was a certainty, prophesied over millennia. This was to mark the beginning of their family’s rule. Without the Triple Goddess, no one could stop Cain Pharmaceuticals from unleashing Hydravirus and then selling the only cure for an exceedingly high price. A select wealthy few would survive and remain beholden to Cain Pharmaceuticals. As for those of divine origin, they would be nothing but addicted slaves.

  Eligos and his family would rise to great power.

  But Eligos was unraveling. His mother had warned them not to let her touch them, but not even she could know the extent that her work was undone. A simple handshake with the youngest of the Triple Goddess was all it took to begin the erosion of the evil inside him.

  Even after two decades of his mother conspiring against the Kildares, the Goddesses were unbeaten. Fynn was clean of Nine and both she and her sister were behind the walls of Brigid’s Keep, the one place any of the Kildares were safe. The brothers were born in the commune. Since they had been to Hell, one step within the place of their births would cause them to burst into flames.

  At least Fynn is safe. A voice in his head assured him. It was his human voice, the one that was his before his internal descent to Hell.

  He would focus his hate on his mother. He saw now that the great witch was nothing but a two-bit hustler. She was a magician, and a bad one.

  He let his claws come out. Then he retracted them with the force of his will. He stood by the window in a perfect stance of a concerned parent. The kid belonged to one of Cain’s employees. They took her out of the company day care and injected her with Hydravirus to spring a trap for Brigid. Eligos was pretending to be her father, bringing her to the medical center for treatment.

  The sick girl looked dead already. She didn’t move or sigh. It was just like his mother to pick on a poor defenseless child to do her dirty work.

  It was easy enough to lure Dr. Kildare away from safety with the promise of a dying child to cure. The witch said that healing a demon virus would weaken the Goddess. She’d be easy for him to slay after the healing. That was what his mother expected him to do.