The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  “Because the brothers were all born in the Keep.”

  “That’s absurd,” Fynn said.

  “Their mother is a crafty witch. She was a follower once. Pretended to be, anyway.”

  “You knew her?”

  He didn’t answer the question. “After any time in Hell, no one can return to the place he was born. If the brothers enter through the gate they will burn.” His fingers splayed to show the explosion.

  “Of course they will,” she said. Her father always had to add a bizarre twist. No wonder she spent so much time in the scientific method. She never wanted to be in an ordered laboratory more than she did at that moment.

  “They’ve been bred for one purpose. Three demons to destroy the Triple Goddess.” The Story Keeper patted her shoulder and chuckled. “Of course, after getting a load of you, there’s only two of them left.”

  “Yeah,” Fynn said. “And one of those is permanently left-handed now.”

  William nodded. “Still, you’d be safer staying in the Keep.”

  “I’ll come back tonight. Komo’s out there unprotected.” He needed detox as badly as she had. She could heal him and then they would both be safe in the day or two she would take to recuperate to full strength.

  “We’ve got some real enemies, daughter. You should know more than anyone.”

  “Bad mother fuckers. Yes. You said.” Fynn pressed a rose thorn deep into her finger until it popped a bead of blood. “Who is the demon hustler? Who is the witch mother?”

  William frowned. “That’s in the dark,” he said. “I’m working on it. She lived here right under our noses and I never saw it. Whoever it is she’s a good hider, I’ll tell you that.”

  “She would have to be. Do you remember a woman with three sons who hated Mom?”

  “We never kept records back then,” he said. “Besides, no one in the community hated your mother.” His brow furrowed in confusion. He stepped out of the shade of the house and Fynn saw his shaking hand, the tobacco colored spots on his skin. “You were gone such a long time, my daughter,” he said. He braced himself on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Story Keeper.” She took his arm and let him lead her through the garden, past the gate.

  Forest duff crunched under Fynn’s boots on the path to her father’s house. The high stone walls of Brigid’s Keep rose on a forested cliff at the edge of the sea. William spent most of his time within the walls, but he had long ago built his own cabin outside the reach of their shadow. He always said he liked the time away when he wanted it. She didn’t know why it was so hard for him to understand that she needed the same.

  Something moved in the windows of her father’s cabin. William held a finger to his lips.

  Fynn thought of the flattened face of the monster in the lab, the lead-lined door twisted off its hinges. She stepped in front of William to shield him and went inside. Pale green bunches of drying lavender and desert sage hung upside down from the rafters. A stranger sat at the small table with his back to the entrance. Tarot cards spread out across the table before him.

  The man stood and regarded her with eyes like chips of blue ice, his head nearly touching the ceiling. Muscles knotted in cabled ropes along his long suntanned arms. A velveteen vest the color of raw meat draped his broad back, and a silvery beard scraggled down his chest like a bank of dirty snow. The man was not a stranger. He saw everything she had done. He saw everything she had failed to do.

  He winked and her mouth filled with the taste of sugared fruit. She envisioned halls festooned with mistletoe and holly garlands dripping with blood red berries, the thorned leaves shining in the light of a hundred candles.

  William came to stand beside her. “Dad. Tell me that isn’t...”

  The not-a-stranger placed his finger beside his nose. He said something in a guttural language she didn’t recognize and her father replied in kind. The old man took something from his vest pocket. It rattled in his palm. With a shake of his fist he opened his hand. Flat wooden tablets etched with stick figures spilled across the surface of the table and scattered the tarot cards like leaves. They were runes, oily from the man’s palms and ambered with age.

  “Nicklaus,” William said in the tone of one old soul to another. “Everything must come to an end.” Fynn shrank behind the brooms of sage and felt young and afraid.

  The silver-bearded one moved to the table and looked over the runes. He pushed them around with one hooked finger. He grunted and swiped them up again like dice. A wind blew through the house and when Fynn turned, all that remained were ashes swirling in the fireplace.

  Bells rang in the distance. Fynn ran to the table. She flipped the tarot deck to see the top card. Hanging Man.

  “With the end coming, he’ll need a new career path,” William said. He shuffled to the propane stove and turned the heat under a teakettle. “There won’t be enough children left to make the nighttime ride worthwhile.”

  “Do you really believe that will happen, Dad?” Goosebumps broke out along her arms.

  “A lot of his ilk are getting the anxiety. They can feel the evil stirring. Fairy tale creatures need protecting as much as the humans.” He rapped a knuckle on the cards. Fynn noticed he hadn’t answered her question.

  “I’m really back home, aren’t I?” Fynn asked.

  “If you aren’t, we’ll all die,” her father said.

  She left him in the worn out rocker in front of his own fireplace to doze. She closed the door to the cabin and headed back to the Keep. If Fynn had to be the Arrow, then she’d set aim on whoever it was that had conjured the Hydravirus. The Story Keeper’s friend with the silver beard could keep his job. Everyone under her care would be safe.

  No one would have to die.

  As she crossed the meadow towards the gate, Lia appeared through the tall grasses. She wore a crown of purple windflowers in her hair.

  “Who was that in William’s cabin?” Lia asked.

  “I’m pretty sure it was Santa Claus,” Fynn said.

  It felt like something they would laughing about if they weren’t nervous about their mother. A seagull flew over their heads and it seemed certain that something bad was going to happen.

  “So much was destroyed at the lab in St. Cocha,” Fynn said. Her eyes darted back to her sister. Sure enough, the swirling knots of the Healer twined down her temple by her hairline. “Mayhem demons.”

  “We know,” Lia said. “Dr. Sullivan told us. In the past two months, we’ve been replicating some of your results with our own blood, Mother’s and mine.”

  A breeze rose off of the ocean and moved the high grasses. They hissed like whispering snakes. Not even her research was her own. Not even the Goddess Strain cure that was built out of a serum of the blood of her own veins could belong to her alone. Now the credit would be shared with her family. Fynn’s heart twisted in jealousy.

  “I’m getting out of here,” she said. “I’m taking one of the vans.”

  “Obey Mother and stay at least until she returns.” Lia’s wrung her hands. “We need the full strength of the Triple Goddess to protect us.”

  “How can you stand yourself?” Fynn asked. “You sound like a fresh convert. It’s sick.”

  “What’s wrong with fresh converts? Converts are lovely people.”

  As her sister’s eyes glistened with tears, Fynn felt her own dry up. Lia was the older sister, but she acted like a child.

  “Because there’s a world outside the Keep.” Fynn said, swallowing a rush of cruel words. Demons or no demons, there was more to life than praising the Goddess and waiting for the apocalypse. Spending any more time with her sister was just going to make Fynn meaner.

  Even in the expansive meadow the walls were too close. Fynn walked away from her sister and headed for the main house. A disciple ran towards them through the garden, waving her arms and weeping.

  23. The Beautiful Dream

  Cain concentrated. He concentrated all the time. He concentrated on keeping his face impassi
ve at work. He concentrated on hiding his pain from his insane witch mother. He concentrated on keeping his impatience in check while the gears of his family’s mechanisms ground into motion.

  He was very good at concentrating.

  Then that day he had caught himself in a familiar rollercoaster of thoughts. If only I were in charge, this would already be done. He had locked his office door for privacy as he opened the file on his screen. The island. The grand house. The white sand beaches. The staff had already arrived there. He’d sent them to get it ready, so that Fynn would be comfortable right away.

  If only I were in charge.

  Well. It was time that he was in charge. He shut down his computer.

  At the end of the hall, there was a stairwell to the roof. His pilot waited in a booth by the helipad. He stood at attention when Cain approached.

  “Where are we off to, Sir?” he asked.

  “I’ll be taking it for a spin myself,” Cain said. He raised his hand to catch the tossed keys.

  “Roger that, Sir.” The pilot ducked back into the booth.

  At the controls of the aircraft, Cain flew over San Jose, toward San Francisco. The blades roared over his head.

  The lights of the city spread below him like a glittering lover. He would have his way with it.

  His mother’s flair for mysticism was a joke. She named her four sons Cain, Eligos, Amon, and poor, stupid Samael after devils and Biblical villains. She enjoyed inflicting pain too much to elicit true loyalty from her sons or anyone else, for that matter. She liked numbers and symbols, and believed in their magic to protect her.

  He swept over the Vine Theater. His mother was too artful and that would be her downfall. Her demon girls would deal free Nine to the raving Komo fans to begin the epidemic for which Cain Pharmaceuticals had the only, very expensive, cure. It was so poetic. It was such an insult to the Divine to begin the desecration of humanity at the concert of the son of Dionysus.

  But every time they moved forward on an action, a problem arose. His brothers were out of control from the beginning. They lost Sam in their first confrontation with Fynn. Amon lost a hand. Eligos’ attempt to eradicate Mother Brigid failed. Their spy at the Oaks Healing Center reported that Brigid was taken away unconscious and probably dying, but not dead.

  Cain circled the Vine like a lazy fly before heading back to the office. He had taken control of everything. His phone lit up on the seat beside him. He already knew there were a series of texts from his operatives around the country.

  It was done.

  He tossed the keys to his pilot and jogged down the clanging metal stairs, jumping the last five. Back in his office suite, he zipped up the sacks loaded with bricks of Nine, a lifetime supply for one impossibly sexy, sweet, addicted young goddess. Within the week, the world would be a distant nightmare that had nothing to do with them. Cain and Fynn would be living a beautiful dream on the shores of an island so remote, it didn’t appear on any maps.

  He unlocked a heavy safe. A steel strongbox sat inside. He unlocked that as well.

  His mother didn’t know he’d taken one of the three precious daemonium daggers they’d paid millions for at auction. The blades themselves, though ancient, held only trace metals from the dagger one brother used in the original murder. There was no mystery to why daemonium was so powerful. No weapon could mortally wound the Goddess of life except the metal used by the first Cain to kill his brother Abel. Everyone knew that.

  Inside the box rested a gleaming 9 mm handgun. It was sleek in his hands as he caressed the barrel. The magazine held twelve very special bullets, smelted in the depths of Cain Pharmaceuticals’ basements just that afternoon by employees who didn’t ask questions.

  He shouldered the bags. He would take them to the plane to pack them himself. The time for waiting for his mother’s word and trusting her was done.

  He felt free because, for the very first time in his life, that was exactly what he was.

  24. The Goddess Strain

  Fynn knelt in the meeting room in front of an altar laden with purple flowers. Color saturated the petals lined with dark blue veins. Their brown centers spilled forward like hundreds of unblinking eyes.

  What had happened to her mother at The Oaks Healing Center was Fynn’s fault. There was no way to bend the story to make it not her fault. There was nowhere else for the shame to go, but on her head.

  She lit a prayer candle with a long match. The meeting room remained in the old building. There were still the same murals on the walls and the squared crosses made of rushes. The three statues of St. Brigid with her nun’s robes and downcast eyes stood in front of the altar. The Catholic saint resembled the true Triple Goddess not at all. She noticed the discrepancy even as a kid.

  She wished she could go back to being very young. She wished she could go back and do her whole life over again.

  Without turning around, she sensed Liadan entering the room. Her sister would probably say that it wasn’t Fynn’s fault, that there was no stopping their mother when she decided to do something. She turned, grateful to be able to find comfort in her sister.

  “Who are you praying to?” Lia asked. She wasn’t smiling. “I would like to know what the girl who doesn’t believe in anything prays to?”

  “I was just hoping Mom would be okay,” Fynn said. She fiddled with one of the flowers and felt stupid. “She’s my mother, too, you know.”

  “Oh, I know whose mother she is,” Lia said. “What would it take for you to believe? How many miracles does a person have to witness before she believes?”

  “I never said I didn’t believe,” Fynn said. A magenta daisy rested in her hand. She rubbed at the veins until they bled against her fingers. Tears welled in her eyes but she would not let them spill. She and Lia had lay hands on Mother for five straight hours. Nothing worked. They were both exhausted.

  “Dr. Sullivan says she might die,” Lia said. Fynn felt afraid. Pieces of flower fell from her hand.

  “She’s not going to die.” Her mother couldn’t die. It was beyond the range of imagination to even consider.

  “This is on you, Fynn,” Lia said. “We’ve lost everything.”

  “Lia, she isn’t going to die.” Fynn’s own anger flamed. Their mother would recover. She always did. The world was crazy enough without making things out to be worse than they already were.

  “It’s your fault she was so weak when she left.” Lia wouldn’t stop.

  “You know she kept me from following.”

  “It’s not just that,” Lia said. “This whole thing is because you had to have your own way. You broke the Three because you just had to leave. You had to go to Athenian and then St. Cocha. Meanwhile, the rest of us waited inside the Keep and prayed for your safety. We just hoped that you’d come back and make us whole again before the end times rained Hell on earth.”

  “You sound just like Mom and Dad,” Fynn said. “You sound just like one of those long, boring fire stories when we would get splinters in our butts from sitting on the benches.”

  “This isn’t funny, Fynn. You just decide not to heed the truth, so, therefore, it must not be true.”

  “That’s enough.” Fynn held up a hand, begging her to stop.

  “What do you care? You’re selfish and you always were.”

  “Not always,” Fynn said. “I was pretty fucking unselfish for a lot of years, Lia.” She dug her nails into her palms. “I ran away to save my own life.”

  Lia strode towards the altar. “She wouldn’t have put you out there if she knew it would make you leave,” she said, and then stopped talking. She shook her head.

  “But that’s just it, Lia. She didn’t know.” Fynn said. “Brigid and William told their fire stories like they were reporting from some kind of infallible news source. But they were making it up as they were going along.”

  “How can you say that? You fought the demons yourself. You know they exist.”

  “Yes. I fought the Three Brothers. They came alive
from Dad’s stories, but look what happened. I fought them and survived. You and Mom were miles away at the Keep. I didn’t need either of you. I killed one by myself and it wasn’t even that hard. All of that time we spent doing archery and combat training to fight them was a waste.”

  A great wind rattled the lead crystal panes behind the altar and clouds swirled in the darkening sky.

  “Yesterday Mom saved you from a demon who was in the middle of killing you,” Lia said.

  “Because I was addicted to Nine and strung out,” Fynn said. “She was weakened because she sucked up my addiction along with the daemonium infection. That is my fault.” She would have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life. Nothing Lia could say could make her feel any worse than she already did about the Nine healing. “The Triple Goddess was laid waste because I was stupid enough to get addicted to a fucking party drug. It’s that simple.”

  “The end times will come and it will be just us two,” Lia said. “We are weak and we will die.”

  “The end time is just one more fairy tale,” Fynn said. “It isn’t true.”

  Lia moved her head back and forth, as if trying to shake her sister’s words out of her ears. “I’ve lived out there for seven years,” Fynn said, persisting. “It isn’t ending. The world is messed up and full of wars and suffering, just like it always has been, and always will be, but it isn’t ending.”

  She went to her sister. She held Lia’s shoulders and forced her to stay there while she told her this. Her sister was sweaty and tired, just as Fynn herself was, but she had to hear the truth.

  “We need the Three,” Lia said. Fynn patted her sister on the back while she sobbed. Lia’s belief was sturdier than the stone walls around the Keep. It would take a long time and more than a few talks to break it down. Perhaps Lia would never be able to live in the real world. She was twenty-six years old and had very rarely ever been outside Brigid’s Keep, and never without her mother and bodyguards.

  Fynn wondered if she had gotten out just in time in order to be able to live any kind of normal life. She thought of Komo’s house full of rock stars and groupies. She couldn’t call the life she led outside the Keep normal, exactly. But she would return to it as soon as her mother was well. She would stay away from Nine, but she yearned for Komo. He needed her more than ever, she knew it.