The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  The sun shone on her hair so that it looked like fire playing around her perfect angelic face. She pierced him with her dark green eyes and he fell to one knee.

  “I love you,” he said. His voice was a mere squeak.

  “You think I can save you.”

  “We can save each other,” he said. He couldn’t have felt more naked if he took off every shred of his fancy clothes right then and left his suit in a puddle on the tarmac. The pilot called his name but Cain ignored him.

  Fynn cupped his jaw in her hand. He felt the heat of her touch, the power and light that had blinded his eyes now flowing through her palms and softening him. She would blind his heart if he let her. An arrow buzzed his shoulder, so fast he felt its impact but not the pain. He fired a wild shot off towards Lia. He missed her but a woman crumpled near where she stood.

  Lia yelled a name. Jana.

  Fynn pressed against him. She pulled at the lapels of his coat. “Get me out of here,” she said.

  He gave the pilots the thumbs up sign. He jumped to his feet, put his arms around Fynn and hustled her across the landing pad. It wasn’t until they lifted off the roof that he looked down at the Keep disciples huddling around the dropped woman. Lia knelt in a puddle of the woman’s blood. Cain grabbed for Fynn’s hand.

  “We’re doing it, aren’t we?” he dared to ask. “It’s happening.”

  “It’s happening,” she said. Her hand was small in his. He raised her knuckles to his lips.

  He didn’t dare say more. He didn’t even dare look at her, but held her hand like an anchor as they swept over the Keep’s grounds and toward the sea.

  37. The Vine

  Fynn stood on the balcony of the Vine Theater. She had a direct line to the middle of the stage, cast in a cold blue light. The Ritual Madness drummers thundered under Komo’s Dionysian spell. They were an encroaching stampede of wild horses. They were the heartbeats of the gods.

  Below, the crowd moved like one living organism. They swayed and rocked together. Cain sat behind her, flanked by guards. He reached for her hand. “Sit beside me,” he said. “Talk with me.”

  The balcony was empty except for the two of them and a few guards in the back. Cate had arranged for a V.I.P. audience to fill the floor. They all wanted to be as close as they could get to Komo. They pushed against the stage’s edge. Their desire hung in the air like storm clouds. Komo loped onto the stage and the crowd exploded.

  “Applause,” Cain said. He sounded almost too tired even to mock the show. “Please sit.”

  Fynn did as she was told. “I remember you,” she said. It was the weariness that dawned familiar. He had been older than her but not as old as he’d seemed. He was ancient with care and worry, even as a teenager. Now though he was a grown man she sensed a soul that was stunted and bent to nearly breaking with despair.

  “You were a sad boy,” she said. The guards shifted their eyes to each other.

  “I was tough. I had to be.” He traced her palm with his finger. She hid her revulsion. “But I won’t have to be sad after tonight. This is almost over.”

  Fynn sat up straight. The crowd surged as Komo let loose a riff on his guitar. She heard a sigh of longing and startled at the fact that it was her own.

  “He betrayed you,” Cain said. “He’s a faithless god.”

  Fynn blinked through tears. On that point Cain was absolutely correct. Still, she was jealous of the microphone, gripped between Komo’s enormous hands. Despite everything, part of her wanted him.

  I love you, my goddess. It was Eli who said that. She thought of sweet, loyal Eli. In his eyes, she was a queen. To Komo, she was just another groupie - and why not? She was acting just like a groupie sitting in a concert audience, starstruck as ever. Komo made her a faithless goddess. She reserved more revulsion for herself than for anyone.

  “A day from now we’ll be in our own world,” Cain said. His hand grew moist. “The house is ready for us. We have miles of beach to ourselves.” He spoke as if he were dreaming. She supposed he was.

  He leaned in close enough that she could smell his vinegar sweat. She forced herself to smile. She was not a prisoner of this sad man. This was her idea. It helped to remind herself of that. He hadn’t even touched her beyond the constant hand holding.

  “Are we leaving tonight?” she asked.

  “We’re making one stop on the way,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll leave in the morning if you’re able.”

  She repressed a shudder. He must never know how repellant she found him. He shot his sleeves and checked his watch with the frequency of a nervous tic.

  Eli said Cain had been in love with her since she was a kid. He said that Cain had a private island reserved in a remote location. He meant to take her there, and live with her in peace after the apocalypse he and their mother wrought through Hydravirus. Fynn patted Cain’s hand. He grinned as though she’d given him the best present in the world. In the eight hours since he’d taken her from the Keep all he did was talk. He talked of growing up in the Keep, of failing at protecting his brothers from their evil mother. He talked of building Cain Pharmaceuticals from a desire to make medicine for helping people and how Cate took it over for her own.

  Fynn knew what it was like to have a powerful mother. But she’d left at seventeen to make her own way in the world. She could not imagine why he didn’t do the same thing and leave Cate. He handed over his company and his life to a woman he claimed to detest.

  “And so it begins,” he said in her ear.

  A flash of pale blue light caught her peripheral vision. A beautiful girl with a short, sculpted black bob entered the concert hall from a door by the stage. She held a tray of tin boxes from a strap around the back of her neck like an old-fashioned cigarette girl. Her eyes glowed blue.

  Another girl came out of a door on the other side. Then two more on either side of the crowd towards the back. They wore tiny burgundy shorts, velvet jackets and jaunty pillbox hats. The outfits had to be Cate’s touch. Nine was seductive enough without demon girl pushers dressed like dolls, but this was just what a witch would find funny.

  “It’s happening,” Cain said, viewing the action down below as if it were his own private show.

  “It’s happening,” she repeated. Nine was made of Hydravirus. It was pure, evil genius.

  Her fingers itched for a bow. She had ten seconds to wonder where Eli was before he rose behind the guard on Cain’s left. He twisted the man’s neck with a neat crack. The second guard pulled a gun. Eli grabbed the man’s arm in two fists and broke it.

  He tossed Fynn the knapsack he carried over his shoulder. She unzipped it. He’d packed her favorite bow, a leather pouch stuffed with arrows so sharp they poked through the canvas bag.

  Fynn found a position at the edge of the balcony. She pressed her hipbones against the railing to keep steady. The brothers argued behind her. They could not be her concern now.

  She pulled back the string.

  The first one had already advanced on the crowd, a tray full of tin boxes at the ready. Fynn’s arrow hit her square in the chest and sent her flying backwards. She aimed and shot at the one across the floor in the next breath.

  The girls’ demonic howls rose above the music. Komo hesitated in front of the microphone, his eyes darting over the audience’s heads, his fingers still dancing along the neck of his guitar. The demon girl in the back to Fynn’s left glanced up with empty eyes right before an arrow pinned her to the wall. Fynn hit the last one in the back as she tried to run.

  Panic bled from the edges where audience members had seen the cigarette girls slain, but the core of the audience near the stage remained entranced. Then Komo began to sing and the panic in the crowd gave way to rapture.

  The fires dance in your eyes. . .

  Komo. Always with the sentimental lyrics. Fynn smiled. She couldn’t stay mad at him. She wasn’t in love with him anymore, but she was going to get him out of that mess of demons and witches. Her fingers vibrated with
the force of stretching and letting loose the bowstring with such force. She turned to face Eli and found him bleeding on the floor. Blood seeped through his fingers where he held them over his stomach. Cain’s back disappeared down the stairwell.

  “Get him,” Eli said.

  Fynn ripped away his flannel shirt. It was a stab wound. A deep one.

  “Go after him, now.”

  “Shut up,” she said. Her hands slipped in Eli’s hot blood. He bared his teeth. They were razor sharp. “Easy there, Shark boy,” she said.

  Eli’s eyes rolled in the back of his head as she healed him. The long wound sealed as though under a soldering iron.

  “We don’t have time for this,” he said, his voice jagged in his semi-demonic state.

  “I’m not losing you,” she said. Her bloody hands streaked Eli’s face. “Relax. You need to recover.”

  “We don’t have time,” he said again. When he stood he reeled like a drunk man. She pushed him into a velvet-covered seat.

  “Trust me,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. “I am the Arrow.”

  You are my fire girl. . . .

  Komo’s song followed her down the stairwell. It was a song for a girl who no longer loved him.

  38. The Altar

  Komo’s incense perfumed the air. He always had liked the stage to be an altar. Fynn lingered behind the heavy curtain as he sang, the spotlight a halo around his head, his long hair a mane. He wore the same simple t-shirt and faded denim as always. No other costume was ever necessary.

  It was a profoundly hopeful place, the backstage of a theater. It wasn’t just the aroma of the incense that Fynn liked. It was the greasepaint and dust, the smell of human sweat under the hot lights. It was a place where people got ready to make magic. Theater was a sacred gift and she was in a holy place. It was Hecate who corrupted Komo’s gift to the world. She took his beauty and smeared it with the stink of drugs and money.

  Tins of Nine rattled in the sack slung on one side of her back under the quiver. She’d collected every box she could find from the four corners of the floor by the dead bodies of the cigarette girl demons. A couple of pills escaped their tins and rolled under the boots of moshers, crushed to dust as Komo growled into the microphone.

  Fynn hid behind the heavy curtain. The audience undulated beyond the stage end. Komo had always been so magical with nothing but his guitar and his voice. With a band and the stage he had become as powerful as a religion. She hated to tear him from the altar but she would to save him.

  “This makes no difference.”

  Fynn whipped around. Cate stood apart from the stage crew and groupie girls. She wore a tightly fitted black suit, slim skirt, high heels.

  Komo lost himself in a long riff, his eyes closed. He didn’t even see them or sense that Fynn was there. Fynn reached for an arrow.

  “No you don’t,” Cate said. “In front of all these witnesses?” She motioned to the grips and sound technicians, headsets covering their ears.

  “Witnesses won’t matter soon enough,” Fynn said. She pulled the arrow back. “In your apocalypse there will be no laws.”

  “We’re not there yet,” Cate said. “You’ve postponed it for a little while. Really, it will be impossible for you to take him if you kill me here.”

  “We’re leaving,” Fynn said. She lowered the bow and looked the witch in the face. Cate’s eyes glinted with fresh hate. She wondered at the power of a witch that could have created a glamour so great that she fooled a goddess into thinking she was a friend.

  “I’m not stopping you,” Cate said. She laced her arms in front of her chest. Fynn rushed the stage, the handlers and managers greeting her, welcoming her home.

  Her heart pinched. Even knowing that it had been based on lies, she would miss this life. Even tainted by Nine, she would forever remember her short time on tour with Komo as the last time she had been close to human.

  She walked onstage, shading her eyes against the lights. She knew she looked crazy, with her bow and arrows, her big black boots, and her sack of Nine, but she would make him see and understand. He had to leave with her.

  “My goddess love,” Komo sang into the microphone. His outstretched arm glistened in the stage lights, his skin glimmering.

  “Komo. We have to leave now,” Fynn said. “Demons.” He turned his face toward the audience. They raised their hands to him like a creature with two thousand eyes, two thousand grasping hands.

  “You have to trust me, Komo. You are in danger here. We have to go now.”

  He turned to face her and she knew he would never follow her. His glazed eyes told her everything. Her heart swooped down and up as if she were on a horrible carnival ride, broken from its rails, spinning into space.

  “I didn’t know if you were coming back,” he said, holding the microphone at his hip. The band barreled on with the music behind them.

  “It doesn’t matter. You need to come with me.”

  She grabbed his hand but he pulled back, winning the tug-of-war and closing the gap between them. His sweat smelled like Nine. She couldn’t believe she ever thought the drug was sweet. The smell made her think of dead things, long rotten.

  He motioned with one sweeping arm to the crowd, chanting his name to the beat of the drum. Komo’s guitar hung slack in front of him.

  “How can I leave this? How can I leave them?” he asked. The moisture in his eyes spilled over and became tears of dizzy, stupid joy. “Can’t you feel it? They love me. They need me. It’s just too good, Fynnie. I can’t leave them.” He raised his pick and strummed a chord that was pure cacophony at first, then melted into warm oil poured into the ears of the audience that worshiped the young god on their knees. He spun to the microphone and belted a tone Fynn used to love. It was the deep soul cry of desperate longing. She pleaded with him one last time but he shook her off like she weighed nothing, like she meant nothing.

  “I can’t leave this, Fynn,” Komo called. “This is where I belong.”

  Cate’s laugh from the wings was high and shrieking. Komo had already turned his back, enraptured with his new old lover the audience. Fynn bent her head and drew an arrow on the witch. She would take her chances with the witnesses.

  Cate skittered away, twisting and turning within the heavy black curtains. Fynn sent an arrow flying and it thunked into the wall by Cate’s head as she slid into the darkness of the hallway leading to the tunnels underneath the theater.

  “Come get me,” Cate called. The witch could not know the full extent of Fynn’s powers if she thought she could beat her one on one. Even without the Three, Fynn was a goddess. She’d come to the Vine to stop Cate from spreading the demon virus through a mass Nine distribution and to get Komo. She’d achieved half of her goal. The most important half. There was no need to fall into a witch’s trap.

  The band raged on like nothing was happening. Fynn thought of her mother, lying dead in her hospital bed. She thought of the damage Cara and Dr. Sullivan did before they were caught. Fynn wanted to go after Cate in the tunnel. The witch needed to die for what she did to Komo and her family. But Fynn replaced the arrow in the quiver. No more traps. It was a mistake to underestimate a witch. It was a mistake she did not intend to make again. Vengeance would wait.

  Lia was right that her life wasn’t just about her anymore. She had the Three to think about. She had William, Lia, the Keep, Eli. She had a responsibility to the human race that she happened to really love.

  Fynn retreated. She would meet Cate again sometime. Soon, she would make certain. With her coven broken there was limited damage she could do alone. It was time to find Eli and get the hell out of the Vine.

  Komo broke into a familiar song. We run through the forests of space and time, don’t worry baby put your hand in mine. . . .

  “His lyrics were always so stupid,” Cain said. She turned her head, there was nothing there but a pinch on her neck from a needle she never saw coming. Then a descent into a tunnel with no light and no end.

&nb
sp; 39. The Operation

  Fynn woke with her eyes assaulted by bright lights. Her fists opened and closed but her arms remained stiff to her sides.

  “You’re strapped down.”

  Four men came forward, their faces covered in surgical masks, their eyes regarding her with the same glare as the overhead lights. She pushed against the restraints. Arms, head, torso, ankles. Thighs spread and covered in a sheet.

  “Relax,” one of them said. It was Cain.

  “Eli,” she said. The strap on her forehead kept her from looking around.

  “Demon scum,” Cain said. “He can’t help you now. I’m your only friend.”

  “Sir?” One of the doctors adjusted a lamp, his rubber gloves squeaking against the metal. The light shone warm on her middle. “Shall we begin?”

  Cain nodded and stepped out of her range of vision. “How long will this take?” he asked.

  “Depends. She shouldn’t be awake with how much of this we’ve given her,” Another doctor tinkered with equipment on a tray. A tug at her hand let her know an IV had been inserted there. “We’ve given her enough to kill ten women,” he said. Ice water pumped into the vein. A crawling fuzziness around her eyes.

  “Explain to me again why we’re pumping her full of a party drug.”

  “She’s not a woman,” Cain said. “She’s a goddess. Nine is all that will work.”

  The men leaning over her glanced at one another. They weren’t believers, nor coven wannabes. They were Cain’s employees.

  “Help me,” she said, grasping at any dust mote of decency that might float between them. “This man is holding me against my will.”

  Their masks puffed out and in with their laughter. “We know, sweetheart,” the one with the scalpel said.

  “Nine is a form of Hydravirus.” She gasped for breath. “It’s dangerous for you to even be in the room with it. You could be infected.”

  The men backed out of her line of vision. The laughter stopped.

  “She’s lying,” Cain said. “Don’t believe her, and don’t forget what I’m paying you for.”