The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  The windflowers fell from Fynn’s hand. Her boot heels crushed the wilted petals as she disappeared into the forest like an ugly demon-tainted thing that, of course, Komo didn’t love. It didn’t matter what they shared or the things they knew that no one else understood. He was the child of a god. He could have anyone he wanted.

  Of course he didn’t love her.

  The girl’s laughter and cries of ecstasy echoed through the cathedral of trees as Fynn turned and ran.

  Komo’s voice swept the memory Fynn had of being a plain girl with strange blood, running away alone, with no one caring enough to chase her anymore. Under Komo’s spell, she could only remember long nights of surfing under the moonlight and then stretching her body beneath his hands in the meadow, his calloused fingers playing music across her skin.

  ***

  Fynn stood breathless at the lip of the empty stage. He had to come out again. There had to be an encore because it was impossible that the show was over. He couldn’t be gone. The lights had been up for ten minutes, but the audience milled around like sleepwalkers refusing to wake up from a beautiful dream.

  A woman who looked like an Amazon Tinker Bell in a pinstripe suit appeared beside Fynn, tugging her arm. “Komo wants you,” she said. “Will you come with me?” She wasn’t really asking. She pinched Fynn’s elbow, pushing through the sloshing drinks and confusion of the crowd. Fynn thought Cara followed, until they slipped through a side door into a dark hall.

  “I’ll go back for your friend,” the woman said. She shoved on a heavy door that opened into an alley. A black limousine idled with its door open, puffing exhaust into the night air.

  The cries of fans echoed down the long passage. Komo’s name bounced off the walls.

  “Hurry, Fynn.” It was Komo in the back. “Get in before they see you.” His voice was jagged. She wondered just how aggressive his fan base could get. They sounded out of their minds. She climbed in the car.

  “Go,” Komo ordered. As soon as the woman slammed the door, the car lurched forward. Fynn fell onto Komo, clutching the soft worn cotton of his t-shirt. His strong hands braced her shoulders.

  “Careful,” he said.

  The driver veered right to avoid a cluster of fans spilling off the sidewalk. Fynn fell across Komo’s lap. He started to sing. The music rumbled in his chest.

  “You are my goddess little fire girl . . .”

  Fynn slammed herself back into the seat across from him. He wouldn’t get by so easy with her. She wasn’t one of the adoring masses. They had too much of a past for that. “Where have you been? I thought you were dead.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” he said. His dark honey-colored eyes crinkled at the edges. He handed over an open bottle of wine. She took a long drink before setting it down. Komo always had the best. The heat of the wine eased her stomach. She rested her head against the seat to savor the taste.

  He looked the same as always, sprawled in the back of the outsized limo. The space too narrow for his arms and legs. He smiled like she was the one doing him a favor just by letting him watch her drink.

  “You cause a serious scene,” she said, clearing her throat. “People were going crazy.” She wondered about Cara. She should not have left her back at the club alone.

  “Your friend is going to the same place we are,” Komo said. “That lady in the suit is my manager, Cate. She’s taking care of everything. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I hate it when you do that,” Fynn said. The years fell away like nothing. “Seriously. I hate it.”

  “I was just answering your question.”

  “One I didn’t ask out loud.”

  Komo laughed. Fynn kicked his leg. He grabbed her wrist just so that she couldn’t move it without hurting. The dome lights lining the inside of the limo lit up his face. “Ah, Fynn. You haven’t changed. Still refusing to trust magic.”

  She pulled out of his hold. “It’s not a matter of trust, Komo. I don’t want magic.”

  His eyes turned to amber. “How can you say that?” he asked.

  “Because I’m a grown-up,” she said.

  “But you are so powerful,” he said. “I thought that by this time, you would understand.”

  The sweater’s metal threads scraped her back. She put down her wine glass and pulled it off. “Those were games we played when we were kids, but I’m a research scientist now,” she said. She crossed her arms in front of the low-cut dress she was wearing. “My team just made a huge breakthrough in curing disease. There are people all over the world whose lives will be saved because of what we’ve done.” She hated that she sounded like a commercial for herself. Or worse, an infomercial for Cain Pharmaceuticals, but she kept a straight face. Komo couldn’t turn her into a nervous schoolgirl any more.

  “But what about Brigid’s Keep?” He examined the sweater under the lights.

  “I hardly ever see my mother and sister,” Fynn said. “And when I do, I’m always sorry.” She looked out the window at the moon scattering itself on the ocean waves below the winding cliff road. She wondered where they were headed, but was too annoyed to ask. He knew better than to think she’d take up with her mother’s religion again. He was there the day she became infected. He knew why she ran away from the Keep. He knew everything.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “I love your family.”

  “Really? Because if it were up to Mother Brigid, you wouldn’t be a rock star. You and I would both be at the Keep picking weeds in the potato patch and earning black belts in demon karate.”

  “Is this yours?” he asked, pulling the black fuzzy web of the sweater apart in his hands.

  “My friend gave it to me,” she said. “You’re messing it up.”

  “Your friend is juicy,” he said.

  “Right. Glad you noticed.” Fynn shook her head. After all this time, Komo’s lust for other women was still a punch in the stomach.

  “This sweater has silver in it,” he said. He twisted one of the curly filaments between his thumb and forefinger. “So you didn’t see them, did you?”

  “See what?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “The silver also explains why they didn’t see you.” He peeked through the holes in the black angora studded with starry threads. “Silver protects you to an extent, but it also blinds you.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Fynn said. She remembered the weak charm of silver on the Unhuman. It was one of many bits of useless information her father the Story Keeper told around the bonfires. “I don’t worry about that stuff anymore.”

  “Oh no? I’ll bet you felt the demons in the club, even if you couldn’t see them. Didn’t you feel cold? Didn’t you feel sick?”

  Fynn wouldn’t deny it. Lying would do no good, but logical justifications might. “It was a cold room, Komo. And I’m not feeling great because I’m tired from working late nights at the lab.”

  “Demons are better than air conditioning for the chill they make,” he said. “There were enough in that audience to poison a goddess, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m not a goddess anymore,” Fynn said. Her mind flashed on the butterfly she’d touched in the morning sunlight.

  “Tell that to the butterfly,” Komo said.

  “Damn. Get out of my head.” Fynn balled her hands into fists. “I don’t do that to you. I could, but I don’t.” She wouldn’t, either. She didn’t want to. She was sure that if she’d read his mind for more than three seconds, then she would see something having to do with sex. Only not with her. Never with her. Fynn sighed, suddenly very tired.

  “Why am I here?” she asked. “What do you want from me?”

  Komo crossed over to her side. “I need you,” he said. This close, she could smell the cloves and ginger of his skin and the red wine on his breath. He lifted her fists from her lap and pried her fingers loose until they opened. He kissed each palm, his lips pressing against the tender skin. Electricity unwound through her body until it was difficult to
breathe, except in shallow gasps. He did this to her. He did this to her every time.

  “I need you,” he said into her open hands. Her heart leapt with hope and pure desire. Stones of resistance fell away, as he cupped her jaw in his hand. Komo loved her. It had taken him five years to realize it, but he needed her. After five years of patient waiting, she would marry him and take care of him forever. Her future as Komo’s wife unfurled in her mind in satin sheets and guitar music and songs written just for her.

  He knelt with his forehead against her knee. “I need you,” he said again. She undid the leather tie holding his hair. He gathered her dress in his fists, his breath hot against her thigh.

  “You played my song,” she said, her body aching.

  “I told them to play it. I knew you were there. I could feel you.”

  Fynn inhaled the spicy smokiness from the back of Komo’s neck. Heat flowed from her hands as she pressed them down his spine. His muscles rippled beneath his thin shirt. A thick fog of steam shrouded the windows.

  “I need you,” he said.

  “I need you, too.” She ran her fingers through his hair.

  “I need you to be my bodyguard and fight the demons that are trying to kill me.”

  Fynn shoved him away so hard, he hit his head on the window.

  “Demons?” Her throat constricted. Her desire hardened into rage.

  The bulbs of the inside dome lights exploded. Komo shielded his face from the flying bits of plastic and glass. Tiny fragments dusted his hair like glitter.

  “Fynn, calm down,” Komo said. He brushed the pieces of broken light off his pants. “You always break stuff when you’re mad.”

  “You have no idea what I always do. I didn’t touch those lights.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Komo said. “Stop playing dumb.”

  “Stop playing the fool,” she said.

  He shook his great big head. He wasn’t fooling around. He was dead serious. Her face heated with shame. He didn’t really want her. He never had and he never would.

  “This is why I came to St. Cocha,” he said. “I need your help. I was hoping to hire you.” He tried to recapture her hand, but she snatched it away. “I need you to be my personal anti-demon bodyguard.”

  “You have plenty of bodyguards.”

  “Not any who know about the Unhuman.”

  “If you knew how much I hate that kind of talk, you wouldn’t even play me, Komo.”

  “They’re everywhere. Why do you think I dropped out for so long? I was just getting started. I lost everything.”

  “You dropped out because you thought demons were after you? I thought that was a publicity stunt.”

  “Are you serious?” He rested his hands on her knees. “At every show, there were more demons in the audience. They waited for me in front rows and at stage doors. There were dozens at the Catalyst Club tonight. They followed you out. If you didn’t have so much silver in that sweater, you would have seen them, too.”

  “Stop,” Fynn said. The heat from his hands through her dress was more than she could bear. “No more.”

  Komo fell back into his own seat, glass crunching under his jeans. Fynn ached to touch him. A part of her wanted to say whatever it took to hear his laugh spill over his lyrics as he sang for an audience of one. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t become just another one of his entourage. Her demon-poisoned heart felt like it would kill her with disappointment and jealousy.

  They turned onto a wooded road and pulled in front of a huge Victorian mansion perched on the edge of a cliff. They sat in silence after the driver cut the engine. She had been stupid enough to think that Komo wanted her. He was just another lost straggler clinging to her mother’s old stories. Her stomach felt as though it were full of lead.

  Komo peered out the window. He looked like a scared kid. This was the result of her parents’ fear-mongering. Her parents had preached about a demon apocalypse so often that fear consumed Fynn and Komo, even though they were grown up and had been gone from the Keep for years. Brigid’s Keep craziness was a latent virus that made everything ugly.

  “Why me?” Fynn asked. “Why not contact one of the disciples? My mother would spare you as many bodyguards as you want.”

  Komo chuckled, but there was no joy in his laughter. He gave her one last long look before getting out of the car.

  “You’re still the goddess of a religion you don’t believe in,” he said over his shoulder. “If you don’t come around to the truth, then we’ll die.” He kept the door open, but didn’t look back.

  “Miss?” The chauffer extended his hand. “Are you ready to go inside?”

  If she followed him, she would never go back to her life at St. Cocha University. Everything she’d worked for would be dust. She may have been a big fish in a small pond, but it was her pond. She didn’t have to deal with groupies who would laugh as they stole Komo away from her.

  “Take me home,” Fynn said.

  She picked a piece of light bulb out of her hair with shaking fingers. Talk of demons made her nervous, the way sudden noises bothered a veteran soldier. Especially these days when real or imagined, they seemed to be everywhere.

  The tall house blazed with lights. The car crawled past the front on the curved driveway. She willed the driver to go faster. She just wanted to get home, so she could go for a long swim. She planned to swim until she was too exhausted to be sad. She’d swim all night if she had to.

  One window of a high turret stood dark as a sightless eye. Fynn looked up, drawn to it without knowing why. While she stared, a pair of glowing blue orbs emerged from the blackness like a cat’s eyes reflecting the moonlight.

  She gasped. In a blink, they were gone. She put her hand over her pounding heart.

  “Miss?” the driver asked. “Is everything okay back there?”

  “Let me out,” she said, already swinging open the door. She ran to the house, very glad she was wearing jeans and boots under her dress.

  9. The Fun House

  A woman met her at the door. Amazon Tinker Bell from the show. She looked like a Wall Street banker type, crisply dressed in her skirt and jacket. But if she was like any of the other women Komo liked to have around him, she wasn’t as serious as she looked. Fynn expected that she was nothing more than a party girl in a business suit, too in love with Komo to think straight.

  “I’m Cate Soren,” she said, extending her hand. “We didn’t get a chance to meet properly before. I’m Komo’s manager.”

  The woman had a strong handshake. The house loomed behind her, vibrating with a bass line, bubbling over with the shrieking laughter of what sounded like dozens of women.

  “I need to get in there,” Fynn said.

  “I wanted to have a word with you before you spoke with him,” Cate said. She grinned like the two of them shared a secret. Her red lips parted over white teeth.

  “No, really,” Fynn said, moving around her. “I need to see if Komo is okay.” If there were Unhuman in the house, she needed to get Komo out. Now.

  The woman’s smile hardened into a glossy candy coating as she blocked Fynn’s way. “Has Komo talked to you at all about why we’re in St. Cocha?” Cate asked. Her luminescent skin glowed and she looked more than ever like an overgrown fairy.

  “He said a few things,” Fynn said. She didn’t know how much Komo had told his manager about the commune or about her. A skittering feeling crossed the back of her neck.

  “I’m sorry to even have to ask this question, but did he mention anything about devils?” Cate asked. Fynn fumbled for her phone. She wasn’t talking about this with a stranger, no matter how well-dressed and shiny. Komo needed to come the hell out.

  Cate stopped her with a cool hand on her shoulder. Fynn’s bicep tensed. “Fynn, you can trust me,” she said. “I’m worried about Komo.”

  Fynn held her thumb over send.

  “Thank God you’re here, frankly,” Cate said. She grabbed Fynn by the shoulders and gave her a hug that sme
lled of designer perfume and mint gum. “You’re the only person he will talk to.”

  Fynn remained rigid. “I don’t know why you say that,” she said. “Komo is an old friend, but we’re not exactly in touch.”

  Cate leaned forward. “No disrespect to your mother, Fynn. She’s a great woman. Her hospitals have helped many people. But that demon talk has our Komo turned around.”

  “So you don’t believe in the demons,” Fynn said. She put her phone away. Not heeding the prophecies didn’t make then not true. Her mother was right about that. But it was surprising that Komo’s manager wasn’t a starry-eyed believer.

  “Of course not,” Cate said. “Out of context, that would be a very strange question.”

  “Right.”

  “Your mother is a great woman. A great doctor, and nobody would dispute that. But her religion, on the other hand...”

  “It’s crazy.” A traitor’s words. Fynn bit them between her teeth like nails.

  “Of course it is.”

  Cate and Fynn looked at each other. So Komo hadn’t hired a fan or party girl to be his manager. He’d shown some good sense and hired a down-to-earth woman.

  “You’re tired, Fynn,” Cate said. “Come into the house. Spend some time with Komo. He needs you right now. You’re the only one who understands what it felt like to grow up in your mother’s cult.”

  “Commune,” Fynn said. “It’s a planned community, not a cult.”

  “I get what you’re saying.” Cate’s phone buzzed in her manicured hand and she turned it off without looking. “I’m going to ask them to get your room ready,” she said. “And have a hot bath and a good meal prepared for you, as well.”

  A voice cried in Fynn’s head like a distant warning bell. It sounded like her mother. “I’m not staying the night,” she said.

  “Okay.” Cate opened the door. “I have an herbal tea you’ll love.”

  ***

  The kitchen in the Victorian mansion was removed from the rest of the house by a long hallway. A fire roared in a gray stone fireplace that took up one whole wall. Cate plied her with a hot mug of a flowery tea. Fynn took it, but didn’t sit down. The tea smelled like summer afternoons in the meadow and she didn’t mean to, but she took a long sip. She needed to find Komo, to go upstairs and find the hollow-eyed thing. Instead, she found herself drinking down the entire cup of summer-flavored tea.