“You’re thinking of Komo right now,” Lia said. “Unbelievable.”
“Sorry,” Fynn said.
“We need to think, Fynn. Why can’t we heal her?” Lia asked, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t understand why it isn’t working. It’s never not worked.”
The whistling wind died down and only then did Fynn realize that it had been howling through the eaves. She looked out the window.
“A storm kicked up because we were fighting.” Lia dried her eyes with the end of her tunic.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “We didn’t make a windstorm,” Sure they broke some windows in their time, but generating weather out of anger was just another crazy story.
“Is that so?” Lia said. She stood, her hands raised above her head. In one breath, her hair whipped her face as though in the middle of a great wind. She was a giant, rising to the ceiling. The wind so violently roared outside the windows that the heavy leaded glass curved to the interior. People yelled in the gardens and the trees bent under the force of the gale.
“Stop,” Fynn said. She cowered under the altar.
But Lia did not stop. Fynn felt something run over her foot. Rats darted along the wood floor, their tiny claws scraping and losing purchase in the wind. From the corners, centipedes wriggled as though squeezed out of the walls. Insects ran along the crossbeams and wainscoting. A spider fell on a silken thread and landed in Fynn’s hair. She swiped at it as bees swarmed outside the windows, blacking out the panes in an undulating mass.
Lia said something that Fynn recognized as their mother’s old Gaelic tongue. Her voice was the sound of an earthquake in the moment before it rises to the surface of the ground. Filleann an feall ar an bhteallair. Evil returns to the evil-doer.
This was the true end of the world.
The power emanating from her sister was the drumbeat of scalding air before a pyroclastic flow. It was the roar of a tornado bearing down on an oak tree too young to have roots far enough into the earth to keep it in place. Fynn would be torn asunder and blown to pieces by a natural force beyond any story’s ability to explain.
But then, with a great roar, the wind circled to the ceiling and disappeared. The bees peeled off the windowpanes in clumps. A few disoriented mice and a rat darted through the door to the meadow. The spiders and bugs sank into their corners and dark, hidden places.
“You don’t know everything,” Lia said, as still as the surface of a lake with depths impossible to measure. “You think you do, but you don’t. There are things about the world - about yourself, my sister - that you do not yet understand.”
Fynn was afraid to move.
“You’re both idiots.” In the doorway stood William with a beer cooler in his hands. “Your mother is lying in bed dying and you two are bickering over tricks and truth.” He shook his head, shambling to the altar like he was on the way to a picnic.
“You scared the children with that,” he said to Lia. “And you ripped off the heads of my roses. Shame on you.” He shoved the cooler into Fynn’s hands. “Take this to the lab. I’ve got a feeling about it.”
“What is it?” Fynn asked.
“Essence of the star anemone blossom. Windflower - you know what that is. Vials of it.” He shuffled away, still barking orders. “Mix it with the Goddess Strain. If your mother can hold on, it might cure the daemonium poisoning.”
Fynn called to him. “The original Goddess Strain was destroyed at the lab in St. Cocha.” She was still stuck in the world’s way of thinking, of double blind studies and control groups. She wasn’t sure the Strain made from the blood of her mother and sister would work the same.
“It’s running through your bloodstream as you’re standing there talking to me,” William said. “It’s no big fancy science. The thing that works in the Goddess Strain is your blood, pure and simple. It’s a stupid fire story, as you would say, but it’s the truth. But do what you have to do...just stop wasting time.” He waved with one hand, as though he were tired of the both of them.
Inside the cooler there were rows of small vials of golden liquid. Lia held one to the light. It was filled with the essence of the red and purple altar flowers the color of bruises and blood.
“Hurry up,” William yelled from outside.
Fynn headed for the lab in the east wing of the building. It was good to feel useful after the failed hands-on healing. If keeping away from her sister kept Lia from doing the awful thing with the weather again, that would be cool, too.
***
“Can it be true?” Dr. Sullivan asked as Fynn handed him the syringe dripping with her father’s hope for her mother’s healing. “Will it work?”
“William says it might,” she said. The cure was nothing more than her own blood mixed with the windflower, prayed over by both sisters. It was magic, the stuff of fairy tales. There was no science to it. No experiment to back it up. But it had to work. Her mother’s skin was whiter than ever, her face more wrinkled. Her chest was barely rising with each breath.
She and Lia stood to the side as Dr. Sullivan lifted the tubing connected to their mother’s hand.
Fynn’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Komo’s number.
“Komo needs you, Fynn.” Cara’s voice was hushed as though she were hiding.
“Is he hurt?” Lia flashed her a look that would bring the rats out of the walls again. Fynn went into the hall and Lia followed.
“No, he’s sick,” Cara said. “Really sick. He’s calling for you. He won’t let anyone else near him. Please hurry. We’re at the house. I’m scared.”
“What kind of sick?” Fynn asked. Her words were senseless kites in a high wind. She knew what kind of sick. Cara fumbled with the phone.
“Fynn. Please. Get over here.” A dead line.
“No,” Lia said. “Don’t.”
Dr. Sullivan joined them in the hall. “It’s done,” he said. “Now we wait.”
Fynn was already moving through the modern hospital they built in the Keep in her absence. She wanted more than anything to talk to her mother again but seeing her revived would have to wait. She would have to have faith.
There would be time for a reunion when she returned. And this time she would return. Komo was coming back with her that night, and by that time Mother Brigid would be cured. The family could sit down and figure out what to do next. Everything would be as it should.
“Where are you going?” Dr. Sullivan asked, running beside her. His eyes were full of concern. She loved Sully’s kind face and his salt and pepper beard. He was the one person who respected who she was both inside and outside the Keep. She would find some way to thank him when this was over.
“I’m going to fetch Komo,” she said.
His smile was crooked, but he nodded like he understood. He held up two fingers in a peace sign. The old hippie.
Fynn stopped in the basement for a quiver and a long bow. The arrows clacked together when she threw them the back seat of one of the Keep’s SUV’s. Fynn barreled down the road towards the gate. Her mother and Komo would be cured. That was what was important in this moment. She stepped on the gas.
After their healings, she would get to the bottom of this war against her family. With Komo by her side, she would take her place at Brigid’s Keep and fight with her family against whatever storm dared to stand against them.
***
This close to the wall of Brigid’s Keep, the hairs on Eli’s arms curled and smoked. Like a magnet crossed with the opposite charge, the wall repelled him. Yet he forced himself to hide as close as possible to the gate. He tucked his motorcycle into the forest off the road. He crouched in the high grass to wait.
The cries of birds pierced the mountain air. He studied the tanned backs of his hands as though he had never seen them before. When he was a kid he loved to draw. It was one of many things his mother and brothers beat out of him. He touched a boulder wedged in among the others in the wall. He swore with pain, his fingertips smoking.
He slapp
ed his own face to stay focused. Despair threatened to wash him away completely. He would go mad. He would go fucking insane and then he would not be able to do the one thing that he was still alive to do.
He had to protect Fynn.
With Mother Brigid’s touch, his human soul emerged from the shadows. It had taken hours for his demon form to go back to human after he jumped from the hospital window. He hid in an abandoned house down a side road and waited for his limbs to shorten and his claws to turn back to hands.
The return of his soul did not mean amnesia. There was no such blessing. He remembered every second of the time he spent in Hell. He remembered what he had done to get there, too. The memories and shame went along with the physical strength of a demon nature. Mother Brigid needed him very, very strong.
There was the sound of a car’s engine. Her. She was coming out of the Keep.
She stopped at the gate and spoke in a friendly tone with the guard. Eli resisted the urge to jump on his bike. It was important that she not see him, not yet. He didn’t have a plan except to protect her. He would never be able to follow her inside. It was inside that he had been born. All of his brothers had been born there, when his mother had pretended to be a follower of Mother Brigid.
Now Brigid’s Keep was the only place that the Goddesses would ever be safe from the witch’s demon sons. Eli had a perverted urge to touch the wall again, just to feel the heat. He did and left a layer of skin steaming on the rocks. He deserved to burn. He crouched low as she drove past.
He rolled his bike to the pavement and jumped on the throttle, relieved to ride again. When he rode he felt the pain of what he was a little less. The Harley he stole from Cain’s garage made too much noise to allow him space to think too much.
The yellow lines on the road remained constant. He didn’t slow until the Keep SUV loomed in the visible distance. He would let her remain far enough ahead so that she would not suspect a follower. He knew where she was heading.
He had been born and bred to destroy Mother Brigid and her daughters. Now he had only one purpose for drawing breath and not turning around and gunning through the Keep’s gate to burn: He had to protect Fynn.
25. The Awakening
The pistons chugged the apocalypse along in doses of two hundred milligrams each. Red tablets poured from the long tongue of the conveyer belt like valentine candy. Each tiny heart bore the stamp of CS and would bring the human who popped it an evening of pure ecstasy before the virus it contained within bloomed in the bloodstream. The next morning’s high would give way to headaches, nausea, and then death if untreated by a special cure, which only Cain Pharmaceuticals produced.
The Divine would have another experience altogether. Nine caused the Divine to become profoundly addicted and beholden to whoever could keep them supplied.
Two workers in sterile white suits fixed with oxygen tubes snaking out of their sealed hoods scooped handfuls of Nine into bottles and packed them into boxes. Cain watched from his office. Most of the rest of the operation was closed for the entire week to concentrate on Nine production.
This was the final day. After this, they would need a hundred workers to sterilize the facility and begin manufacturing the Cain Pharmaceuticals cure. The two on the floor now were already doomed, despite their oxygen and hazardous material suits. Nine was pure Hydravirus. Even with the sugar coating, virus in the loose particles would have their way with the workers. Demon viruses didn’t care about sterile barriers any more than his demon brothers cared about human decency.
Komo’s show at the Vine tomorrow night would get the plan in motion. The concert would be the tipping over of the first tile in a complex domino design. The pieces would fall in a giant chain reaction, and before the final end, his real life would begin. Fynn would be his within the week.
Of course, the Hydravirus would not mean death to absolutely everyone. Those who could afford to live would live. His mother’s genius was that the cure was addictive to humans and the virus addictive to the Divine. No one would be wealthy anymore after they unleashed Hydra. No one would have power.
No one, that is, except his family.
Fynn would need him so badly. Saliva filled his mouth at the thought. It was just a matter of time until she was his forever. He would be good to her. He would never make her wait for a dose. She would get whatever she needed whenever she needed it and in return she would be his forever. They would live like gods in their island palace.
He would dress her in silks and diamonds. Or maybe just diamonds. Maybe he wouldn’t dress her at all. He would never mind the scars she would have after the doctors operated. Even her scars would be beautiful because they would be the chains that kept her bound to him.
“Why are you smiling?”
Cain startled. His mother had ghosted in and stood beside him. He clenched his jaw. She scratched his back lightly through his shirt. He shuddered involuntarily. She walked her fingers up his spine and across his shoulder. Then her fingers jumped to his ear. She jabbed one finger into the ear canal and grabbed onto the outside of the lobe like a handle and wrenched.
Before she let go he huddled on his hands and knees with his nose pressed against the industrial gray carpet, hot blood pouring out of his ear. His mother chuckled from the back of her throat. She moved across the floor to the window of the other side of the factory.
“Get up,” she said.
He obeyed her, gaining one foot and then the other. He fumbled in the front pocket of his suit jacket for a cloth handkerchief to hold to his ear. The joy created by his plans for Fynn Kildare was killed for the moment.
“The mother bitch is dead,” she said. “I got the call five minutes ago.”
And just like that, she brought his happiness back. With one dead, the other two would be greatly weakened. Amon and Eligos would be able to kill Liadan with little trouble. His heart surged despite the stabbing pain in his ear.
She stood with her back to him. She hooked one sharply-manicured finger, beckoning him to come look out the observation window with her. His stomach lurched, but again he obeyed.
“Deliver Fynn to me tonight,” he said. He heard his own voice against his ruined ear drum as though his head were packed with stones. “Amon and Eligos will take care of Liadan. It’s time.”
She crossed her arms and wouldn’t say yes or no. Her cropped blonde hair waved perfectly on her head. She pursed her shiny lips. How he would love to see her scream in pain.
There were four in the coven, including Cain and his mother. One had been planted with Mother Brigid. Cara was meant to keep Fynn safe for him. Cain took the handkerchief from his ear and folded it over before applying it again. He tried not to think about being a kid in the Keep. They left when he was thirteen, after Eligos turned four. They had loved the green meadows and the heavy vanilla smell of the sugar pine trees. The coastal mountains were like fortresses of a mighty God. The ocean like God’s beautiful mother.
Fynn was so much younger than Cain, only a child when he left. At the University party she said she didn’t remember him. It hurt him worse than anything his mother administered. He was just one of many who followed Fynn around.
Cain went to the meeting room the day they left the Keep and prayed at the altar of Brigid. He begged the Goddess to make his mother leave without her sons. If only she would just go and never return so that Cain and his brothers could be free of her. He never prayed for anything so hard in his life.
That day Fynn came in and found him there. She didn’t ask him why he was crying, but she held his hand and brought it to her heart. He could feel it beating. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. She patted his face and gave him a knowing smile. Cain had stared after her as she walked away, forgetting his pain and humiliation and fear. He stared after her, forgetting everything.
But it hadn’t worked. His prayers meant nothing. That day his mother packed them up and they left the Keep forever. They didn’t say goodbye to anyone. They drove past K
eep children playing in the field outside the wall. He pictured the entire place closing over as though he were a small pebble thrown into the ocean. No one would ever remember him.
“You’re thinking of her right now,” his mother said, her voice a velvet purring. “I don’t understand the fixation. There will be hundreds of girls crawling on their knees for you in a couple of days, son. You’ll have your pick.”
“I already know who I want,” he said. Once this was over, he would walk out of the glass doors of Cain Pharmaceuticals and never look back. His mother could have the company. She could have the world. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want the hundreds of women she promised. He only wanted Fynn.
He and Fynn would live like the last two people on the planet. They would live like the new Adam and Eve only this time without offspring to get in the way and ruin things. After his brothers killed her sister, he would make absolute sure that Fynn would never have children. If one of the goddesses had two children and formed another Three, she would be all-powerful again. She would be a goddess again and he would have nothing again.
He could never allow that.
Cain held the cloth to his ear. The bleeding slowed though he could hear nothing from that side. He wondered idly if he would ever hear from it again. Although he usually healed from his mother’s little games, he was never sure he would.
On this side of the observation tower they looked over the white warehouse. Four rows of gurneys lined up in the middle of the floor, one hundred in each row. Nurses in white scrubs walked up and down, checking the machines connected by masses of wires and tubes to the sleeping body on each gurney. There were hundreds of nurses, one for each slumbering patient. It was lots of work keeping one person in deep coma from dying. Keeping alive four hundred whose souls would by this time be desperate for the relief of death was a huge undertaking. The young faces of the sleepers looked peaceful and quiet. The nurses kept their bodies fed, hydrated, eliminated and warm. Yet somewhere far away the souls and psyches of those bodies were lost.
The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) Page 16
