The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1)

by Maureen O'Leary

  The birds parted as Fynn descended on the massacre. She landed and hefted Eligos’ beaten form over her shoulders just as he had carried her. She stepped over the bodies of her enemies with Cain’s brother across her back.

  “Move,” Fynn said. Cain’s eyes were level with her feet. He dropped to the floor of the utility closet and backed into the corner. She climbed down with Eligos a limp weight that she carried like it was nothing. The last Mayhem brother was dead. Cain chewed on that small piece of bitter satisfaction even as he cowered in terror of the Goddess.

  Feathers floated over her shoulders as she set his brother down. Eligos’ face was swollen beyond recognition, his corn silk hair torn out in tufts. Cain wanted to dance on the hulk of his body but he did not dare move except to draw his gun from its holster.

  Fynn did not even lift her eyes to look at him. She held her ear to Eligos’ chest, her mouth a grim line. She sat down beside him with her legs folded and drew him to her like a gigantic doll. She wrapped her arms around him, rocked him to her chest and sang a song in a strange language that Cain did not know. Her body vibrated and warm light shone from under her hands. Cain reddened. He did not belong there. He was witnessing something beautiful and divine that had nothing to do with him. She exhaled a deep mournful breath and the sound of it crippled Cain with desire.

  Then Eligos stirred. He whimpered like a child waking from sleep. She pushed him to standing before getting up herself and leading him out of the tiny room. She did not look at Cain. He had to bring his hand to his own face to tell himself he still existed. He was under no veiling spell. He was of too little consequence for her to see.

  Cain stood with his gun hanging at his side. All was quiet except for the muffled flapping of wings, the muted cries of blinded and dying demons, and the whispered keening of his own breathless sobs.

  42. The Apprentice

  Everything William did was slow, deliberate, the old-fashioned way. He would call the way he did things the right way. He made cocoa with real chocolate and cream, no powdered stuff.

  Within the Keep, Liadan sat in long meetings with Guardian leadership. They were preparing for the coming storm, talking strategy, taking stock of supplies. More families were moving in and people needed to make room. Fynn knew that she should be there at her sister’s side, but they’d been in meetings since morning. She’d excused herself from the group during the dinner break and shared a meal with William and Eli in the cabin. The meeting had surely resumed by now but she just couldn’t seem to make herself leave.

  Eli stood watch outside. William wiped down the table crumbs and shook out the washcloth in his small sink. The portable television in the corner flashed blue light. Just a new kind of story fire, William called it. One he didn’t like much. Moved too fast, he said. They never took the proper amount of time to tell a thing right. They never got the full story.

  Fynn watched the screen and sipped cocoa. Her stomach was queasy. The withdrawals had been a week through Hell, but they were over now. This was something else.

  She knew what it was. She knew since the night Cain had tried to have her sterilized and a source of energy killed the doctor who cut into her. She knew since the wound he made healed on its own by the time she put the final arrow through Cate’s cold heart.

  She knew since she commanded the birds to fly at the demons’ eyes. She knew since she could fly.

  At first, the grief for the loss of Komo’s love hurt. But it healed nearly as quickly as her scalpel wound. The love-sodden groupie she’d been for Komo seemed to her another person altogether.

  She thought of the baby Goddess growing inside of her, the daughter of either a demon of mayhem or a god of madness.

  William settled in next to her on the couch. “It’s Komo’s,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” her father said.

  “You knew?”

  “I know everything. You’ve been pregnant since before our friend came to throw himself at the mercy of the Keep. This child is double Divine. Goddess help us.”

  Fynn let that information settle for a minute. This child did complete the Three. That was not a question. The calling of the birds on the roof of Cain Pharmaceuticals proved that the Triple Goddess power had never been greater. Only Mother Brigid had ever been able to call the animals like that and even so only in legend. No one had actually seen her do it.

  “Any sense of the effect on the baby of being formed in a stew of Nine?” Fynn asked. She kept her eyes on the screen and pretended she wasn’t mortified to have to ask.

  “That’s cloudy,” he said. “I don’t really know everything. I just like to say I do.” He turned the volume up by twisting the knob on the ancient television.

  Investigators continue to puzzle over the origin of the explosion that ripped through the Cain Pharmaceuticals industrial complex last week. . . .

  William opened a window to let in the night air. When he returned to her side, his shoulders slumped as though he carried a load of sadness on his back. He laid his wrinkled brown hand on top of hers.

  On screen, black smoke billowed from the roof of Cain Pharmaceuticals. Even through the fuzzy picture the destruction was impressive.

  “Eli’s work, I suppose,” he said.

  “Mother told him where we keep the explosives,” Fynn said. “In a dream.”

  William looked out the window. Fynn pretended not to notice but she knew he wished Eli would finish his rounds and come in with them. William loved talking with him. She knew he was out there, beyond the clearing where the moon lit up the meadow, keeping watch for Cain.

  A previously unrecognized severe virus has been traced to homeless teenagers in the San Francisco metropolitan area. Local medical authorities assure us that there is no immediate cause for alarm as new infections seem limited and controllable by quarantine.

  “Well,” William said. “So it begins.”

  “So much for saving the world.”

  “You bought time. Not that it was for sale.”

  Fynn shook her head. In the Keep labs the techs were working in shifts, making as much pure Goddess Strain as they could with the remaining windflower extract and as much blood as Lia and Fynn could spare and remain upright. Still, Fynn worried that it would not be enough. There were about to be a lot of very sick people.

  Fynn was under no illusion that they had succeeded in eradicating all of the demons any more than she had gotten rid of all the Nine. They reduced the supply - bought time, like William said. A little bit of time.

  William squeezed her hand. “So, I’m thinking of training a new storyteller,” he said, switching off the television. “Tired of doing everything myself. I need an apprenctice.”

  “Ha, ha, Dad.”

  “I can’t live forever, Daughter.”

  “Well don’t look at me. I’m not doing it.”

  “I wasn’t looking at you.” William turned back to the window.

  “Who are you thinking then?”

  “Not ready to say yet.” William’s lips quivered in what looked like the hint of a smile, then disappeared. Fynn drained her cup. Her stomach quieted.

  “It’s weird to think of someone else being in charge of the Stories,” Fynn said. “Maybe you could wait. Just for a while.” She didn’t think she could stand any more changes right then.

  “These things take time anyway,” William said.

  Fynn got up and helped him with his denim and sheepskin jacket. They walked together on the path to the high stone walls of Brigid’s Keep. Fynn thought she heard an animal moving in the woods, but when she stopped walking to listen there was no sound.

  “He’s got an eye on us,” William said. Eli. The demon.

  “Will the community accept him?” Fynn asked.

  “Cloudy,” William said. Just like everything else these days.

  “See you at the funeral,” she said and kissed her father on the cheek. He left her at the front door of the main building. Lights blaze
d despite the late hour. Every doctor, nurse, researcher and technician they had would be working long hours for weeks to come. They had to arrange systems to deal with what was coming. They wouldn’t only need a cure if what the witches had sown came to its ripest fruit. They would need food, clean water, ammunition.

  Fynn watched her father disappear through the gate. Between the trees she thought she’d caught a glimpse of blue light like a flash of a gas flame. Then it was gone.

  ***

  Lia held Fynn’s hand and it was strong as iron. Fynn’s fingers hurt, but she was grateful for her sister’s grip. Jana stood across the fire, her face still glowing from Lia’s hands-on healing of the gunshot wound. The chaos on the roof felt like years in the past though it had only been just over a week.

  The rest of the community stood with the Kildare family. It was a much larger crowd than when Fynn first left the Keep at seventeen. They bloomed from the pyre at the center, stretching their numbers to the outer walls. Fynn could not see to the end of the crowd. Lia said there were nearly a thousand residents. Some were people who wanted communal living for their families. Others were doctors Brigid had recruited for fellowships, and their families. They needed to knock down more walls and rebuild in a wider berth. They needed more space to grow food.

  There was a mountain of work ahead of them.

  William’s song rose as the flames engulfed Mother Brigid’s body. The fire blazed as though consuming a piece of dry tinder, nothing but a three hundred year-old shell of fragile skin and bones once her soul left it. The sparks flew into the purpling evening sky.

  William’s voice intoned over the crackling of the fire. People moved in to hear. His voice was weakened with age and Fynn knew that though people were as silent as a church congregation most of them wouldn’t be able to hear him. When Fynn was a kid, his voice had the strength to carry over many, many heads.

  He’d said he needed an apprentice to train in Story. But who? It couldn’t be either of his daughters. They were needed for other things.

  Maybe William meant that the new Story Keeper would be Fynn’s baby, but her daughter wasn’t yet born yet. It would be many years before she would be ready to take on the role of Story Keeper. William needed someone to share the burden now.

  A movement in the tall redwood towering over the wall on the other side caught Fynn’s eye. He was almost entirely hidden from view by the thick branches. Fynn pretended to be rolling her head to get a kink out of her neck so as not to alert her sister that he was there. If Lia saw him she would get upset and order him down. Fynn could not even mention Eli’s name to her sister yet. He was okay as a brute bodyguard kept at a distance. But the one time Fynn suggested Eli could be a surrogate father to the newest link in the chain of Three, storms blew and windows broke. Jana had forbidden them from discussing him.

  Eli remained in the tree while William chanted. Fynn felt him staring. Staring at her. Her skin warmed with more than the heat of the flames. She wished more than anything that he could join them in the Keep. Liadan would have to get over it then.

  I’m thinking of training a new storyteller.

  Fynn pressed her face into her father’s shoulder. She knew the apprentice William meant.

  William finished his prayer. They stood in shared silence. Fynn remembered her mother’s warm green eyes. She remembered her gentle hands, the way she smelled of sage and fire. She remembered her mother’s embrace, while Nine poisoning had stolen her own power. Mother Brigid’s touch was like the warmth of a sunbeam after a chilling rain.

  After William’s song, silence.

  Fynn looked around at the faces of the community, lost in the memories of Mother Brigid who loved them. Brigid had loved them as a true mother loves her children. A part of their hearts would be lost now that she was gone. It was up to them to fill the space she left behind with love. They needed to love like she did, with no fear, no walls around their hearts. Fynn hoped that they could do it. Without their mother’s kind of courage, they were not going to survive.

  After a time the people turned from the dying fire. A group of children started chasing games in the meadow. Lia gave Fynn a quick hug and then let go to find Jana. They’d appointed Jana as lead of security and there was work to be done over fortifying the outer walls during construction.

  Fynn made sure that her father had company for the evening. A couple of the older Keep residents lingered at his side and assured her that he would be all right. Fynn was grateful to them. She would mourn her mother every day for the rest of her life, but she would need to do so while working. The Hydravirus was passing along barely detected now, in the form of the spare Nine tablets that escaped Fynn’s interception at the Vine and the explosions at Cain Pharmaceuticals. The virus was a rager. It would not take long for it to flare into something no one could control, not even Mother Brigid’s medical centers and health foundations. Hydravirus would be the apocalypse that the Story Keeper foretold. It was the reason Brigid built the Keep.

  Fynn strode past the laughing children towards the main building. She wanted so badly to walk the other way, through the gate to the arms of Eli who waited for her on the other side of the wall. She longed for his lips and hands and body that would make her forget her grief. She steeled herself to go into the main house. Later in the night Eli would be waiting for her in his own cabin outside the walls. Knowing he was there gave her strength to face anything.

  They had to prepare for the people who would be coming. Because they would be coming once the storm broke and the hell that Cate had wrought broke loose. The people would be coming and they would need her to give them a safe world. They would need her to fulfill her destiny.

  They would need her to be the Arrow.

  43. The New Day

  The sky was the steel gray of the earliest hours of the morning when the sun is barely a rumor and the waves rise in white-capped swells beyond the line of breakers. The water had already washed the smoke from Fynn’s hair and the fatigue from her eyes. She sat on her board before the vast ocean beyond St. Cocha Alley. This was the last place she could feel insignificant and small. Sea birds circled high above her head. They had begun as only a few gulls and terns at first, keeping her company after the busy post-funeral meetings at the Keep. In the hour they had gathered in numbers to form an eerie, silent-winged cyclone reminding her even here of what she was.

  Eli paddled to her side. He sat up on his board and they bobbed together on the waves as the sky lightened and the water grew rougher. He reached for her hand and even that light touch electrified her.

  “Let’s take one last wave,” she said. He tugged her arm. She leaned in for a kiss that was clean and salty. He licked her bottom lip. She laughed and paddled to meet the approaching bruiser. She rode the curl into the rocks as Eli whooped behind her. He stayed the perfect distance from her ride, joining her side again only as she glided toward the cliffs.

  She hefted her board under her arm. “Home?” he asked, a catch of desire in his throat. The birds dispersed as she drew him close for another long kiss.

  “Home,” she agreed. To Eli’s cabin hidden in the thickest part of the forest, far from the rest of the world to whom she belonged. There she knew he would have waiting a hot bath, a fire, and fresh bread. There would be clean white sheets on the enormous bed and for the space of the morning at least, she would belong only to him.