“My new army,” Cain’s mother said. She leaned forward and pressed her head against the glass. Cain watched her in profile, her cropped hair exposing the back of her neck. She looked almost vulnerable for a moment. Her eyes glistened with pure happiness as she gazed over the four hundred demons in the making.
“Expensive work, army building,” Cain said. “This better be worth it.” His mother grinned. Sometimes she punished him less if he was snide. He felt a heaviness on his shoulders. He was tired of trying to read her moods. He was tired of the painful punishments. His fingers itched for a knife that he could drag across that elegant neck.
“This is the Awakening. You won’t have to worry about paying anybody but the janitors.”
Of course money wasn’t an issue anyway. Cain Pharmaceuticals had billions at their disposal. They had the cash to pay as many mercenaries as they needed to comb the streets of every major city in the country for young street thugs and gang members. He had to admire her efficiency. She had four hundred young murderers drugged, incanted over, and in a shallow death within two weeks. All while organizing a rock show to end all rock shows. She was a great CEO.
Her fingers looked like claws on the window ledge. One of the boys on a gurney twitched. His mother pressed a button to a loudspeaker.
“Go to number twenty-four,” she said. One of the nurses nodded but she hesitated before moving. The boy tore the wires and tubes away from his face and body. Blood ran down his arm from where he pulled out his I.V. The nurse was a young woman, maybe twenty-three years old. She was pretty, her hair in a swishy ponytail. She glanced up at the window.
Cate pressed the loudspeaker button again. “Go,” she said.
The nurse moved toward what she thought was the lesser evil. Cain had to pay exorbitant salaries to keep employees who would withstand visits from his mother. She kept her finger on the button so they could hear. The nurse spoke in a hushed tone to the twenty-fourth newly minted demon. She was telling him that he was all right now. She was telling him that there was nothing to fear.
But there was plenty to fear. The young man grabbed the nurse and sank his teeth into her neck. She fought but he was stronger than she was, stronger than before he fell asleep that morning. He had not been gone long enough to be able to shape shift like Cain’s brothers, but there was little humanity left in him now. And he was strong. Freakishly, hellishly strong. He flipped her over on her back on the gurney and he fed on her until her blood flowed over the sheet and blanket and floor.
Cain hated the waste of beauty. All of the nurses and assistants his mother hired were good-looking, strong, healthy people. The chaos at the awakenings was more delicious to her when the victims were beautiful. The demon opened his mouth smeared with the nurse’s blood and yowled.
The other nurses ran straight for the doors. Cain’s mother giggled at the metallic thunks of the locked knobs not turning. It was like watching people trying to escape a burning building. Up and down the rows, others were stirring. The gurney wheels squeaked as their occupants opened their eyes to their new, post-Hell selves.
“It’s the fresh blood on white that I love,” Cain’s mother said, her voice a prayerful whisper. “It’s just gorgeous.”
Cain’s throat filled with bile. He was a witch like his mother, yes. She had indoctrinated him into that life. He had claimed to forsake his soul when he entered the coven of four. She had promised him Fynn if he did. She would be kept alive after they killed the other two. The Three would be broken and he would have his prize.
He turned away from the scene. His mother’s obsession with death made him sick.
“You are weak,” she said. She kept watching the floor and he wasn’t sure if she was even talking to him. He returned to the window over the factory and watched the doomed pair at the conveyer, sorting Armageddon in a party drug that came in pretty metal boxes.
Cain’s ear throbbed until he couldn’t hear anything anymore except the beating and rushing of his own blood. He was grateful after all that his mother had ruined his ear and damaged his hearing.
He didn’t want to hear the Awakening.
26. The Nine Talking
Fynn sat in the armor-plated vehicle in the silence after turning off the engine. Dr. Sullivan texted good news. Her mother’s vital signs were improving. She’d be awake by the time Fynn got home.
Windflower. She wondered what other tricks her father was hiding. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She was so relieved. Now to help Komo.
Fynn opened the car door and was hit by a wild urge to get back in and drive away as fast as she could. Unhuman. Mother Brigid’s voice sounded close, as though she were in the passenger seat. Fynn raised her shoulder to rub it against her ear. Unhuman. Her mother’s voice again.
“I can take care of this,” she said aloud. “Focus on getting better.”
Her mother went silent. It wasn’t what Fynn expected, but she’d take the gift.
Fynn got out of the car. She couldn’t wait to make up to her family all that she had brought on by being an addict. Once back at the Keep, she would do anything she could to help her mother’s recovery. Then the Three of them, Brigid, Lia and Fynn, would sit down and have a long talk about their next move. They had to do something about Hydravirus, they had to shore up the family and the Keep from any future demon attack.
They had to stick together.
She rubbed her arms against a prickling dread as she walked up the front porch steps. She paused before opening the door, resting her hand on the stained redwood.
“Courage,” she whispered.
Suddenly the door opened. It was Cara, worry lines between her eyes. “Fynn,” she said. “Thank God.”
She pulled her into the house, the whole place booming with party noise. “He keeps calling your name. He won’t let me call the doctor. You’ve got to convince him to go to the hospital. He won’t listen to me.”
Fynn moved through the rooms. She’d never seen it so crammed with people. Discordant guitar music twanged through the walls. A shifting curtain of smoke hung in the air. Girls were everywhere, hanging off the shoulders of entourage boys she barely remembered. She passed through the great room and one of Cate’s guards lounged on the couch flanked by two naked women.
Fynn clomped up the stairs in her best pair of heavy steel-toed lace-ups. She had dressed for battle, but no one in that house was sober enough to give her a hard time.
“Where is Cate?” Fynn asked. The house had gotten seriously out of control.
“She’s not here, Fynnie. I was hoping she was with you.” Cara followed behind her heels. Fynn turned in the hallway at the bottom of the stairwell to Komo’s tower room. Her room, too. She was so innocent the first time she slept there with Komo. It was only two months before that she’d become addicted to Nine, before demons were real, before she was a goddess again, with the full responsibility that came with the title.
The truth was, no one could handle Komo, but Fynn. She felt a surge of pride. After two days without her, everything in Komo’s house had fallen apart.
“Help him,” Cara begged. “Nobody else can.”
“Stay here,” Fynn said. “I’m going to see him alone. Try to get a hold of Cate.”
Cara whispered thanks. In the octagon room, Komo sprawled on the bed. A sheet twisted around his long body, his chest rising and falling with each tortured breath. Sweat covered his sallowed skin in a veil. His eyes were clouded, half closed. He didn’t see her. He didn’t even recognize her.
She tried to feel his forehead. He smacked her across the face with a flailing hand. A star exploded under her eye. Her mouth filled with blood.
She climbed on to him and clamped her knees around his sides. He bucked beneath her. She muttered in Gaelic, old St. Brigid prayers.
Her palms burned. Komo’s body went stiff. He arched, the veins of his neck and forehead popping like cables. He bucked again, but she squeezed tighter. The poisonous force of the Nine rose in a tide. The e
nergy flow had to remain one-sided. She fought the addiction worming its way through the connection she had opened between them.
Komo’s addiction pushed. Images flashed in her brain. A crying child. A young man bloodied by a trip mine. A needle inserted into an addict’s arm.
“Get back,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She was more powerful than any virus, no matter where it came from.
Fynn pressed her hands into Komo’s bare chest. She would heal him. She would heal him and he would be strong again, and they would stay clean forever. She shook off an image of a child shrinking from a pounding fist. If she ever doubted Nine was demon in origin, she never would again. This was a rollercoaster ride through Hell. She gasped for breath. Her palms melted into his bare skin. She looked away from his hate-filled eyes.
“Get off of me, you bitch,” he snarled.
It was the Nine talking. She told herself this because if her heart broke now, they would be lost. She reached into him, a deep dive into his Divine being.
The Hell images vanished.
A vast expanse of midnight sky opened above their heads. Under the sky the earth formed, seas roiling. Daylight spread over a world where vines curled from the dirt and fat grapes ripened under a hot sun. Casks passed hand to hand, then horn cups, then crystal, then glass. Beautiful women laughed over goblets of burgundy wine. The Nine burned off in the sun’s heat. Music flowed from plucked sinews stretched over gourds, from polished lyres, from metal strings of electric guitars. She rode the waves of sound as Komo’s music vibrated in her bones.
Komo lowered his hands down her hips. He tugged at her jeans until she shed them. He pulled her on top of him again. A dream world bloomed of sweet ferment, satyr hooves flashing in the moonlight, driving rhythms on skin drums. Drumbeats carried them through the eons. She desired Komo past reason. Together they were the only ones left in an entire world of music and drumming and fire.
***
A familiar ceiling. Komo’s room. Fynn’s leaden arms and legs weighted her to the bed. The power that flowed through her while she and Komo made love had seeped away. She willed her arm to move, but could barely wriggle her fingers. Nine pooled in her spinal cord. Its venom coursed through her veins like quicksilver, heavier than blood. She was as paralyzed as she had been after the overdose of Nine she’d taken the last time she was in Komo’s house.
Not again.
She mouthed Komo’s name. Her stomach heaved, but she forced herself not to throw up. She didn’t have the strength to roll over. God damn if she was going to die there choking on her own vomit.
Komo was clean, wherever he was, but the addiction healing had worn her down like a dead battery. No wonder her father didn’t want her mother to do this, not even for Fynn. Just like when she overdosed with the Ritual Madness girls, she couldn’t move. Her heart felt as heavy as her limbs. Her mother’s sacrifice was for nothing. She had spiraled back to the same trouble as before.
Downstairs the party thumped against the walls like a wild beast caught inside the house. The party had a mind of its own, or a mindlessness of its own. The son of Dionysus knew how to cause a ruckus. She tried to make a fist to bang on the bed, but her fingers wouldn’t curl.
Heavy steps echoed on the stairwell. The two remaining grad student surfer boys from St. Cocha came in, talking and laughing like this was just another party for them. Mayhem demons in their human forms. Her stomach heaved again. The room stank of sulphur.
Amon tugged on her arm and she flopped like a rag doll as she puked all over Komo’s bed. They didn’t need to worry about touching her now. She was so weak from the addiction healing that she would not be able throw a punch, let alone a ray of divine destruction.
Her heart was made of feathers, her blood of down. Her skin sizzled as the one-handed demon held a daemonium blade to her throat, but his brother held back his hand. The light-haired one muttered, his voice the sound of a thousand insects crawling across stone.
Not yet, he said. Then he punched her in the face.
So this was how she was going to die.
***
Eli forced himself to stay in human form with a teeth-grinding force of will. He could sense the suspicion within his brother’s dried jerky of a heart. Amon’s head bobbed like a hyena’s, his eyes glowing blue.
Eli struck Fynn with the back of his hand. Her head lolled around on her neck like she was already dead. He was horrified but nothing less would convince his brother. Amon relaxed enough that Eli could carry Fynn down the stairs relatively unharmed. He watched that her head did not hit the railing.
The demon brothers carried the goddess through the great room. Several sets of eyes glowed pale blue like dozens of blinking pilot lights in the dark. They were lesser sorts than he and his brother, humans carrying demon spirits they’d developed in short sojourns in Hell. These demons would be sniveling, jumpy. His mother liked to keep this type around. They tended to do what they were told.
All of the demons had hurt an innocent in order to get their pass to Hell once they’d gone under the drug-induced comas at his brother’s warehouse. They thought it would make them all-powerful. His mother never told them it would drive them insane.
Mother Brigid had returned Eli’s sanity along with his soul. In this chaotic place, he knew what to do. She had whispered to him in his dreams: Protect Fynn.
His skin stretched in thin patches over his bulging muscles. His fingernails cracked through the tips of his fingers. He tried to force them not to turn to claws, but there was only so much will to go around. He shifted his grip so that he didn’t cut into Fynn’s arms. He passed the roaring fireplace and it lit his face. A barely demon girl screamed when she saw him. He guessed the change was already underway. Since Mother Brigid healed him, he couldn’t control his shape shifting the way he once could.
Fynn moaned. Eli turned to follow her gaze. Komo lay on the floor, the idiot, an empty silver box of Nine in his open hand. Ritual Madness girls covered him, kissing his neck, running their hands over his body. His eyes drifted at a drugged half-mast, watching with no interest as the two Mayhem demons carried Fynn away. One of the girls looked at Fynn with a wicked grin, her hands sliding down the front of Komo’s jeans.
“No,” Fynn said. Eli yearned to comfort her, but all he could do was heft her over his shoulder in a way he hoped would be more comfortable.
Cara stopped them at the door. “Cate says to take her into the woods,” she said. “Cut out her heart and bring it back.” She pushed a large silver box engraved with a four-point star into his hands.
“Let’s have some fun,” Amon said. A string of drool dripped from the side of his mouth. He wiped it with his sleeve. He grabbed Cara by the arm.
“Get away from me.” Cara yanked her arm back. “I’m not in this for you.”
“Come with us,” Eli said. “You’ll enjoy the show.”
Cara stood for a moment and thought about it. “You’re right,” she said, nodding. “I really will. It will be good for me to see her die.”
The air outside the smoky, sweaty house was painfully fresh. They went down the porch steps, Eli leading with Fynn over his shoulder. They stopped at the top of the driveway. She stood in front of Fynn’s van. Eli’s mother.
“Good job, boys,” she said. He snarled at her, wanted in equal parts to weep at her feet and tear her apart.
“Is it okay if I go with them, Cate? I thought I could, you know, be helpful.” Cara flipped her hair behind her shoulder. False bravado, Eli thought. Her anxiety smelled sour.
Cate’s high heeled shoes clacked against the cobblestones. She ran a finger under Cara’s jawline. “I don’t give a fuck what you do,” she said.
Cara smiled with the uncertainty of a child afraid of being hit, knowing it’s coming, just not sure of when. Cate palmed her face and pushed her away. She sauntered behind Eli and kissed Fynn on the cheek where her head hung down his back.
Fynn’s body tensed in Eli’s hold
. He had to get the Goddess away from the Witch Mother before she changed her mind, fetched the daemonium blade, and did it herself.
Eli put Fynn in the front with him and let Amon and Cara take the back. He turned the ignition with a misshapen hand. His mind raced with panicked thoughts. He ached to see the Great Mother again. She was still alive, which he knew because he felt her livingness through a connection that tied him to her. He would do anything for her. Her kindness was as necessary to him as water and air. He had to save Fynn.
Eli gunned the SUV down the highway towards the trailheads into the redwood forest. He turned the radio to full blast heavy metal that drowned out Amon’s ragged breathing behind him. Fynn groaned as the SUV hit a pothole. He put his arm around her to buffer her from hitting the window along the rough road.
In the rearview mirror he watched Amon force a kiss on Cara. She tried to push him off but he was very strong. His young man’s handsome face was a façade. There was nothing left human in him any more. Amon was a living tornado of chaos. There would be no managing him when they got to the isolated place in the forest where their mother directed them to kill Fynn.
Eli focused on the road. If he could get them into the wilds fast enough, he could save his mother’s witch girl from the affections of his demon brother. Amon was a lunatic, but he wasn’t stupid. It would not be long even with Cara there as a distraction that he would realize that Eli wasn’t going to let him kill Fynn.
A piece of Fynn’s bronze-colored hair blew against the side of Eli’s face. She smelled like caramel and vanilla sugar. She smelled like a dream of uncorrupted humanity and he loved her so much with his sore and battered heart.
Eli wished he dared to slow down, to give himself more time to think of what to do, but that would only draw suspicion from his brother. Eli was stronger, but Amon was fast. He had brought Eli down before, delayed him enough that he would have killed Fynn with the blade if Mother Brigid hadn’t known to come. Anxiety shortened his breath. Amon slapped his shoulders, taking his panic for enthusiasm.
The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) Page 17
