The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  “We’re going to tear the bitch apart,” Amon said.

  Eli turned off the highway. Drove toward the trees.

  27. The What-ifs and the Demons

  Sparks flew, breaking for freedom only to die in the cold night air. William stood close enough for the heat to singe his eyebrows. They were getting too shaggy anyway, yet another side effect of getting old. He hated thinking about just how old he was. He may have been the Story Keeper in spirit, but he was still the man William Pulakatu in body. The skin and bone shell he was in this time around wasn’t going to hold up forever. He’d never been alive in a human form this long. He wasn’t sure what to expect.

  He stared at the dancing purple ephemera and waited for a vision to make sense of what was happening to his family. Dreams of scorpions in his bed plagued his dreams in the past month. He was uneasy about getting under the covers at night. One of the many prices of being human was having to wait for the other side to tell him what was what.

  His palms whispered like fine sandpaper as he rubbed them together. The fingers on his left hand bent over the shape of a phantom pen. He was always writing. He had been the Story Keeper for two hundred years. It would be hard to straighten his fingers now even if he wanted to. If anyone besides their daughters knew William and Brigid’s real ages they would freak out as the young people in the Keep liked to say. Of course everyone was young to him now.

  Liadan patted his back. She knew not to talk when he was waiting for a trance. She’d known that since before she could form words in her baby mouth. The story spirits weren’t on speed dial. He couldn’t conjure them out of nowhere.

  He smiled into the fire but his eyes weren’t in it. He waited for the vision like he was supposed to but his patience was growing thin. Lia was certain that Fynn was in trouble again. Fynn had fled the Keep and she wasn’t responding to phone calls, not that Lia needed the phone to know that something had gone terribly wrong with her sister.

  The ways the stories and prophecies played themselves out was almost always surprising and usually tragic. Lia’s unhappiness stirred a cold wind and the fire cracked. William pulled his wool shirt closed. He wished that whatever demon storm was brewing would break already. He and Brigid were getting tired. The windflower extract would work mixed with Fynn’s blood. He kept the extract fresh in vials. No telling when a demon might pop up with a Hell-honed blade for his goddess wife and two goddess daughters. He would have to extract more to make up for what was used, but the windflower would work. Nothing else would. Without it, she would have died, but with it Brigid would probably be rocking in her hearthside chair by dinnertime.

  This addiction healing business was no good. It would have been better for Fynn to go through it by herself. At least then she would still be in the Keep and Brigid wouldn’t have been so vulnerable to the Mayhem demon.

  What-ifs and demons would be the end of him. Both of them were terrible things.

  William poked the logs around with a stick and sent a burst of newly aired flames high into the sky until they touched the tips of the branches of a pine.

  “Careful, Dad,” Lia said, always the cautious one.

  The bonfire quieted. William sat on the wooden chair carved out of an old Sequoia stump. It was a place of honor and while people liked him to sit there while he told the stories, it was dangerously close to a throne. Now he just felt silly, sitting above everybody like a forest troll in one of Brigid’s Celtic fairy tales.

  Lia pulled a blanket around her shoulders. It was a cool evening. She looked like her mother with her unkempt hair falling in faery tangles. Liadan and Brigid were not of the world the way Fynn and William were. In Fynn, William saw his own grandmother’s face. She had the same wide forehead, coppery skin and serious eyes. She was so beautiful, his youngest daughter. He wondered if she knew how stunning she was.

  His love for his family caught him in a choking sob, the way it did these days. He swiped at his eyes with the back of his leathery hand. Old men were always crying.

  Out of the purple and blue heat jumped the forms of four witches. They moved towards him out of the pit, gnashing their teeth. They had the hungry souls of forest fires set by arsonists. Two women and two men. Four by design. The tall woman led them.

  The Story Keeper willed himself to stillness. Then he began to sing in the ancient language of his own people. It was a long wailing that was sad and strong at once and made the story grow like air on a fire.

  Smoke clouded their faces. They were four witches who used demon power to cause chaos worse than a wildfire, worse than anything nature could devise. They had created a nuclear bomb on a microbial level, aimed at human life. They used weapons forged by ancient witches from bloodied weapons of war mixed in a crucible with the molten blade used in the first murder. The sin of the original Cain gave Daemonium its toxic power against the Divine. The only thing that could injure a goddess was humanity’s destruction of one another.

  It was beginning now. After two hundred years, he would finish his purpose in the form of William Pulakatu, the third son of a Maidu chief, born on the shores of Lake Tahoe long before settlers overran it. He shook his head.

  “Well?” In his eldest daughter’s voice he heard her fears. He thought about what to say. Even after all this time, he was careful about what he told when. Even a good story told at the wrong time could ruin everyone’s lives.

  “There are four witches hiding,” he said. “I can’t see them. But they’re doing their work on us, that’s for damn sure.”

  “I didn’t know evil could hide from gods.” Her frustration sounded dangerous.

  “My sweet daughter,” he said. “If evil couldn’t hide from gods, we’d still be in the Garden of Eden.” She cracked a half smile and William felt grateful for that small grace. “A demon’s got your sister,” he said.

  Lia cursed at him and a blast of wind shot ashes into the sky. “Tell me where,” she said, already turning to the main house and the cars.

  “Head for St. Cocha. She’s in the woods off the road. You’ll know when you near it.” Her back retreated in the evening gloom. He watched until she reached the door of the house. The angry slamming echoed against the Keep walls.

  William gazed at the tops of the great trees and remembered when they were saplings. He shared the laugh with them. His wife was a crafty one. She was a trickster goddess with a taste for the macabre. Leave it to Brigid to bless the worst of the Mayhems, restore his humanity, and tie him with all of his brute strength to the protection of her own children. Lia wouldn’t like it, but he thought it was hilarious. As soon as Brigid awoke, he meant to compliment her on her style. Beating the devils at their own game for two hundred years was almost enough fun to make him want to keep doing it for two hundred more.

  Almost.

  He headed towards the gate to see if the guard would be up for a tale or two. It was beginning and soon he would be like a character in one of his own stories, a storyteller who by dawn would be greeting monsters at the gate. The story would be a good one. He almost wished he be around long enough for a hundred re-tellings.

  His swollen arthritic knees complained as he walked over the uneven path. He almost wished he would be around. Almost.

  28. The Betrayal

  Fynn flexed her fists. She could move again. Her joints fluttered as though she held butterflies between her bones, but at least she could move again. Shattering music boomed against the windows. The one who drove was in a grotesque, half-human form. The light-haired one. Eligos. She concentrated on breathing.

  The driver jerked the car to a whiplash stop. The radio cut out with the engine. The demon leapt out the door. He tore off his shoes. She watched him, willing herself not to panic as he shifted. His feet were three-toed and broad and not even half human.

  The other one leapt from the backseat and sank his teeth into her shoulder. The pain was shocking. The driver threw open her door and yanked her onto the dirt. So they would fight over who got to destroy her
. They would pull her apart.

  Her strength flickered inside of her, a flame deciding whether or not to blaze. Frustration bubbled and popped in her throat. She cursed herself for wasting her mother’s addiction healing, only to die like this. She was supposed to be a prodigy, a Ph.D. candidate and research scientist before she was old enough to legally drink. Yet none of her smarts kept her from falling for a trap set by a common witch and a couple of stupid Mayhem demons. Cate. Of course, the head witch was Cate.

  She never should have returned alone. Her love for Komo made her blind. Blood gushing from her shoulder soaked her shirt. She’d sapped her body to heal him and make love to him, and now she was going to die alone while he made out with a bunch of groupies.

  Fynn’s muscles tingled with pins and needles, but she gathered the strength to crawl from the SUV. They were at the end of an abandoned side road. Up ahead the thick redwood forest looked almost like safety. She expected to be hit or stomped, but she kept moving.

  The demons were arguing with each other. Curses interspersed with bizarre clicks and growls. Her energy was flaming out and a black curtain threatened her peripheral vision. The one-handed one leapt over the SUV and landed right in front of her. He kicked her in the jaw with a three-toed foot. She grasped the scaly ankle and willed the power to flow through her hands as it had when they had first met, but there was only a fizzling spark.

  Amon kicked her in the stomach. He bent down to sniff her, his pupils skinny vertical slits in shark blue eyes. He bared his teeth and then a hot blade broke into her side. She convulsed and wished for unconsciousness as the daemonium poison spread through her body.

  Eligos jumped on his brother’s back. Amon dropped the blade. Fynn crawled from the snarling mass. Her blood turned cold from the center of the wound, emanating in petals of razor ice. Cara crouched to Fynn’s side. Her silken hair fell over Fynn’s face, smelling of shampoo and perfume. It was soft on her cheek.

  “Run, Cara,” Fynn said. “Save your own life. I’m already dying.”

  Cara touched Fynn’s forehead. “I hope so,” she said. Cara tugged at the cross around her neck so that the chain snapped. She pressed the silver cross into the hollow of Fynn’s throat. The metal was cool against her skin.

  “I’m surprised the cross doesn’t burn you,” Cara said. Her voice had a dreamy quality. She was someone Fynn did not know. The demons fought with each other just feet away. Fynn clutched at the wound in her side, her own blood sticky between her fingers. Cara smiled.

  “They were supposed to have a job to do.” She motioned at the demons wrestling like enormous rabid dogs and sighed. “Stupid boys.” She grabbed the blade that had fallen in the dirt.

  “Cara,” Fynn whispered. “My cell is in my pocket. Call my sister. Let her know where we are. Then get as far away from here as you can. Run.”

  “Right,” Cara said. “You don’t get what’s happening here. I’m not really on your side, Fynn. I never was.”

  “You can’t trust them,” Fynn said. “Witches and demons are liars.” She winced. It hurt to talk.

  “Yes, but I’m going to end up with Komo and that’s the important thing.”

  “Cara,” Fynn whispered. “Covens never stand. They’ll kill you.” One of the demons whined like a hurt animal and bounded off. The other chased him and their howling faded in the distance. If only she could convince Cara to get them both in the car and down the road while they still could.

  “You were pretty easy to scam for someone who is supposed to be so smart,” she said. “It’s kind of funny that you’re lying there trying to give me advice right now.”

  Fynn rested her head in the dirt. Loneliness swept through her worse than the daemonium poison. Her tired mind didn’t bother trying to puzzle out the specifics. It was a worn-out story. Cate and Cara were witches, with two others in the coven. She had learned enough as a kid about the way witches worked to know that she’d fallen for a trick as old as the sack of Troy. The enemy hid behind false friendship, sharpening their stingers for the day they could pounce.

  Yet Fynn also knew that covens imploded. Sooner or later they turned on one another.

  “You aren’t safe,” Fynn said.

  “Yes I am. And when we’re done, Komo will be all mine.” Her eyes shone. She bent to lift Fynn’s shirt off her stomach and she lowered the daemonium blade to touch the tender skin there. Fynn rolled away quicker than she had thought possible and the edge glanced across her belly.

  “You were my friend,” Fynn gasped. “You were my only friend.”

  “You’re all going to die,” Cara said. “That’s what I like about your family.”

  She straddled Fynn and raised the knife. The look in Cara’s eyes was no more human than a demon’s glowing orbs. Fynn held her useless hands in front of her own throat in a sad attempt to protect herself.

  There was a grunt and a thud. Amon fell to the ground beside them, his throat torn open to the bone. Cara cursed and leapt to her feet. Fynn curled over on herself like a snail in a shell. The demon who had shoved the knife into her looked into her face, a gaping hole where his jugular artery used to be.

  The other brother grabbed Cara. He cracked her neck with his bare hands and let her lifeless body fall. In terror Fynn waited for her own death. She murmured her mother’s name. Eligos gathered her in his arms and ran toward the stand of trees and into the forest, her blood running down her side like silk ribbons.

  29. The Cave

  Fynn lay in a cold dark cave and felt stupid. In just the past week she had been addicted to Nine, injured and poisoned by daemonium and healed and then hit by daemonium again. She coughed into the dusty ground and it blew back up her nose. Now she was going to die as a Mayhem demon’s plaything.

  The demon crouched in a corner. He barely moved.

  “Just kill me already,” she said. She sounded braver than she felt. Once he started in on the killing she would wish she’d kept her mouth shut. But she really hated sitting around waiting for him to get started.

  He made strange noises from the back of his throat then fell silent. He did not come any closer, but sunk further in the shadows. Fynn clutched her wound. The bleeding had stopped, but the daemonium coursed through her. It ran in ice streams through her veins. She thought of the serum that she had given Dr. Sullivan to give to Mother. Someone who thought ahead would have brought some for herself. She hadn’t figured this would happen again. She thought she would grab Komo, take him to the Keep. Like that plan had worked so well before.

  A hawk cried. Shadows speckled the mossy cave ceiling in the waning afternoon light.

  She never should have left Brigid’s Keep. She could not see the point in being a goddess when she not only could not see the future, but she could not even see the truth in the present. She had healed Komo just to deliver him to Cara. Cara who had been in love with him all along.

  Fynn moved her hand away from her side and the pain made purple dots dance in front of her eyes. The demon panted in the gloom. Maybe he fed off of her fear, but her fear was going away and annoyance was replacing it. His brother had been a bloody torn up mess, but without incineration he would come back to life in time. Demons did not die easy. It took a solid burning to make them stay dead. Once he found them, they’d fight again. Or maybe they’d tire of that and eat her heart out of her chest together.

  A cool breeze passed into the mouth of the cave and Fynn shivered. Maybe she would die of cold and exposure and this one would sit and watch while the whole thing happened. It would take a while, but maybe that was his thing. Maybe he was a death pervert who just wanted to watch. He trundled forward and she cringed, instantly regretting goading him. She hated pain. She hated it and she was tired of feeling it.

  He took off his flannel shirt and snapped it so that it billowed like a sail. He tucked it under her chin. His knuckles rubbed against her neck. He smelled human, of aftershave and soap, with a faint undertone of sulphur. This wasn’t the acrid stink of hellfire. The s
mell reminded Fynn of visits to hot springs in the mountains with her father when she was young. The water had healing properties and it made their skin soft after long soaks. She blinked back tears thinking about him. William was such a good dad, letting her go off to make her own way in the world. He never tried to make her feel guilty about it. She missed him and if she closed her eyes she could hear his trance singing through the trees.

  The shirt was warm and large enough to cover her. The demon grunted and exhaled. He sounded like a dragon puffing in the corner.

  “So are you going to kill me now or kill me later?” she asked. Her voice sounded shaky and only slightly brave. He growled in answer, but did not move again from the corner.

  Fynn dozed despite trying not to and when she startled awake it was totally dark. A sliver of moon lent a faint light. The shirt wasn’t enough to keep away the cold. Her teeth chattered violently. She had lost too much blood. She couldn’t stay warm.

  The demon came nearer. His leathery feet padded on the dirt and stones. She lifted her arms up to her face in an instinctive reaction so he stopped. He clicked a lighter in his hand and a single flame illuminated his face. He was turning back into the guy at the St. Cocha lab party. His face was nearly human again.

  He held the dancing flame to a pile of duff and sticks piled on the ground. Soon a roaring fire sent shadows dancing across the walls and low ceiling.

  He was staring at her. Now that he was turning back she met his eyes. What she saw was the most shocking thing so far that strange day.

  The demon was sad. He wasn’t crying. He was beyond crying. His sadness was a deep dry desert of remorse that his clear aquarium eyes reflected instead of demon fire.