The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

If she had only known. Well, she couldn’t fault her family for not giving plenty of warnings.

“Put on your seat belt,” she said, pressing the gas. She’d retooled the engine for fuel efficiency, but it wouldn’t go more than seventy miles an hour. She took out her phone, her eyes darting the outside for any sign of glowing eyes.

All that mattered in that moment was getting Sully and Artemis safely to the Keep. Then Fynn would head back to the mansion by the sea to find Komo. They needed to move to the Keep for a while. The Mayhems weren’t regular demons who would be held back by a goddess/lover/bodyguard. They wouldn’t stop until Komo and Fynn were dead. She doubted they would try a face-to-face attack again. Eligos was too smart to try it and if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought she saw a weapon flashing in the moonlight: a rough-hewn dagger inscripted with ancient lettering.

Please don’t let it be daemonium. Please let daemonium blades be a myth, the kind that stays in stories, not the kind that is real.

She called Komo’s number. She cursed at his gravelly voicemail message and resorted to texting.

Demons. Call me.
She gunned it as fast as the truck would carry them down the hill.

“Praise the Goddess,” Dr. Sullivan said.

“Please stop talking,” Fynn said. She was in no mood for goddess worship.

She drove with her phone in hand, waiting for the screen to alight.
Where are you?
She reached out with her feelings, but sensed nothing in return. The demons could not have reached him already. At this point, they would be reeling from their failed attack. She barreled down the road to the Keep and stopped at the gate. A disciple exited the guard station, a smile on his goofy face. Fynn felt like punching him.

“You’re not coming in?” Dr. Sullivan cradled Artemis. “You’ve got to come in and see your mother, at least.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ve got to do,” Fynn said. She revved the engine. “Get out of the truck. Tell her I’m bringing Komo here tonight.”

Dr. Sullivan looked like he wanted to say more, but they weren’t in the lab. Their problems were beyond the hierarchy of the university, and far beyond the realms of science. He sighed and did as she said. As soon as he slammed the door closed, she turned the wheel to St. Cocha and left Brigid’s Keep in her rearview mirror yet again.

The women inside the house had no idea they were in danger. They sat on the sofa and on cushions on the floor holding glasses of sparkling wine. One was telling a funny story that made the others laugh so hard they almost spilled their drinks on the carpet. If they looked over their shoulders, they would have seen the steam cloud on the window forming from Amon’s breath. His brother Eligos dragged him to the bushes.

“You’re visible now,” Eligos said. His lips hurt moving over his teeth. He wasn’t yet used to being corporeal. It was a clumsy feeling. They had gone for the youngest daughter of Brigid too soon, losing their brother and Amon’s hand for their mistake. Their witch mother hired physical therapists to move them through somnambulant exercises during their half sleep to keep their muscles strong. But inhabiting bodies took practice after being conscious solely in spirit form for three long years.

Eligos wiped drool away with the back of his hand. His face was flattened into a hellish grimace. After the attack on Fynn earlier that evening their shift to human form wasn’t sticking. Their teeth were too big for their human mouths. They both drooled blood from biting their tongues. He hated looking at Amon because he knew he was looking into a replica of his own face.

“We are turning,” Eligos said. “Wait.” Amon shook his head, long past speech. Blood dripped down his chin like sauce. Eligos glared at him, hatred a bubbling tar smothering his human soul.

His reawakened human soul. It was causing him excruciating pain. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He did know that he had to hide it from his brother or die at his hands.

For Eligos could not kill the youngest goddess earlier that night. He stood impotent with the daemonium blade in his hand and watched while she turned one brother to ash. Amon had to chew off his own hand to get away, not noticing that Eligos hung back from the fight, paralyzed.

He moved his mouth to speak, but what came out was a guttural croak. Panic shook him to his core but he couldn’t let his brother see it. He had to swallow the anxiety that replaced his demonic rage ever since Fynn jumped for the Nine tablet and grabbed his hand instead.

He had been too eager. He never should have taunted the goddess with the drug. Demon rage was a powerful weapon but it made you so fucking stupid.

They were sent to Hell in order to be reborn to destroy the Triple Goddess. It was the brothers’ job to break down every obstacle to the coming Demon Age. The Triple Goddess in the incarnation of Mother Brigid, Liadan and Fynn weren’t just their prey. Those women were their very reason for being.

Panic shivered under his skin. He was reborn to kill Fynn. He was the strongest of the three brothers, reborn for mayhem. Yet from the moment she shook his hand at the party he felt a hard crack of his ice heart. It hurt. He couldn’t stand how much it hurt. It felt like a hot pitchfork stabbing his internal organs and that was bad enough. The worst part was the racing tide of fear.

For a moment as they chased Fynn in the woods outside the buildings he thought he smelled the spicy scent of the purple daisies that grew inside the Keep. He’d flexed his fist and instead of a warted claw he saw a child’s hand holding a bouquet of those same purple flowers, a gift he had picked for his mother.

His mother. He huffed, a spark of rage returning. He welcomed it. He let it cradle him like a warm sea.

Eligos and Amon watched the women from the darkness of the shadows. When the time came to fulfill their purpose, Eligos would be ready. After three years in Hell, it was unthinkable that any human part of him could remain to reawaken. In time it would have to disappear and there would be no escape for their prey then. When they descended upon the Three, there would be no mercy. After they killed the goddesses, their mother and oldest brother, Cain, would be free to unleash a chaos that would spread across the world. Their family would share more than the power of kings. They would be the new absolute gods.

Without a noise, Eligos leaped over his brother. Before Fynn touched him, the change exalted him. He could jump three times his own height, run faster than any human could ever dream. But the most wonderful part was the strength. The power of ten thousand years of destructive force coursed through his muscles.

“It’s time,” Eligos said, his voice a series of low ticks. Saying it would make it true. He ignored his heart thudding a warning in his chest. The women’s laughter carried through the open window. With one claw, Eligos pushed the window further along its track. Slowly. Creeping. These women would present no challenge. The Three they were meant for were more powerful than any mortal women. The encounter with Fynn that night had more than proven the strength of the goddesses. The remaining two brothers had to practice stealth. They would practice on these human cows.

Amon lunged for the throat of one of the women on the floor. Eligos meant to let him do it. He meant to help him do it, to kill most of them himself. But without thinking he swept ahead of his brother. The women screamed as the two demons grappled on the floor. Eligos grabbed Amon by the back of the neck and threw him out the window before following him the way they came.

“Patience, Brother,” Eligos said through clenched teeth. His own need clawed at his insides. He needed to kill the way he needed to eat and drink. The hunger rose in him like a great hollow emptiness but the new goddess force that stopped him from feeding it was greater. It was a sticky feeling, something unnamable and so powerful that he found he could not kill the women in the same way he could not kill Fynn.

Amon howled but Eligos was stronger. He pulled his brother along, away from the house of women. Amon feared Eligos because he was stronger, but he would not be yanked from a kill again.

They fled over the backyard fences of the suburban neighborhood. Eligos eyed the open sliding glass doors of the houses. He knew Amon shared the killing hunger. It would be nothing for them to break a swath of death through the whole neighborhood. They ran across a vacant schoolyard toward their car. Their clawed toes scraped against the asphalt.

Eligos panted as he changed back into a human form. He caught his reflection in the car window then looked away. This weakness and self-loathing couldn’t last. He had to regain who he was before he had shaken hands with the goddess. Her witchery would wear off soon. He would be a killer again.

He meant to tell himself this as a comfort. Instead, he shivered in horror at the thought.

The truck almost skidded off the shoulder before Fynn righted the wheel. She thumbed her phone while she drove. Komo. Cate. Cara. No one was answering. She envisioned a demon horde, burning rubble, a house filled with blood. She called 911, but when the operator answered, she hung up. She didn’t know what to report.
Two demons are gunning for my boyfriend. You’ll know it’s them because one of them has eyes like a swimming pool and the other one only has one hand.

Fynn tore into the driveway, gravel spitting from under the squealing tires. She slammed on the brakes to keep from rear-ending a moving van parked at the end. She jumped out and ran to the house. All the lights were on, the doors and windows open. Idling vehicles lined the driveway. Two moving vans, three buses, a limousine.

Cate stood at the kitchen, blasting instructions into her phone “Leave your truck here,” she said when Fynn walked in. “You’re packed and ready to go. He’s waiting for you in the back of the first bus.”

Fynn could barely feel her body. She moved through the bustling household like a disoriented ghost. Groupies bustled around the house cleaning, folding linens, packing food, herbs and tea. They talked to each other in excited voices, their hair pulled back into ponytails and buns to keep it out of the way of work. They chattered about a world tour, in breathless listings of cities.
Paris. New York. Oh my God we’re going to New York.

Fynn climbed the stairs to the tower room. The bed was made tight as a hotel bed, the candles and incense were gone. Someone called her name from downstairs. The motorcade below began to move. Vehicles were already peeling off from the line.

“You okay?” Cate appeared in the doorway, her phone buzzing in her hand. “We got a string of last minute dates, Fynn. Isn’t that great? We have to hit the road, baby. It’s all starting now.”

Fynn looked down at the ruined borrowed blouse, the torn skirt, and her bare feet. Her clothes reeked of charred flesh and sulphur. Cate didn’t ask questions. “Take a quick shower and change your clothes, Fynn,” she said. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Komo is waiting for you.” She started talking into the phone while she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. While confirming a venue in Milan, Cate came out and slid open the closet door. Inside the otherwise empty space hung Fynn’s favorite pair of faded jeans, her softest cotton shirt dress, and her boots. As Cate clipped down the stairs again, Fynn entered the warm spray and tried not to think. She showered and dressed as fast as she could, the demon threat as faded as a bad dream. The only real danger was that Komo and the Nine he would surely be saving for them would ride off without her.

When she went outside, only the bus remained. The cold air chilled her wet head. Fynn climbed the dark bus stairwell knowing that she would have to think of a way to thank Cate. For an earthly woman with no notion of the true dangers Fynn and Komo faced, she managed to be a perfect mother to both of them. It had to be Divine inspiration to know to get them out of town at just this moment. Fynn would suspect Mother Brigid had something to do with it except that if that were the case they wouldn’t be heading for a glittering concert tour. They would be headed one way only, down the road to the Keep.

Komo’s legs stuck out from behind the purple curtain in the back. Dread struck Fynn as she walked past the empty seats. She was terrified that he was there with one of the girls. Behind the curtain she straddled his hips, her hair falling in his face, her hands on his chest. Fynn ripped aside the curtain.

But it was just Komo. Only Komo. He lay back on huge, plush pillows, and he smiled at her with a satisfied, blissful grin. He held a silver box in his giant-sized palm, its popped top uncovering two heart-shaped pills. She climbed his long body, curled up under his arm and felt like crying with relief.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Open your mouth.”

She did as he said. He placed a tablet on his tongue and then flicked it onto hers. He popped the remaining dose of Nine into his own mouth and wrapped his arms around her. She thought she should tell him about the Mayhem demons, about the terrible danger that hunted her. But the engine rumbled beneath them as the driver followed the caravan toward the freeway. They would be driving all night, the world passing outside the windows while she and Komo slept in the luxurious bed covered in silk blankets and down pillows. The demons would never find them here. Fynn fell into sleep, her exhausted body and mind slipping down through a thickening mist of Nine that was everything she ever wanted, that told her not to worry because Komo loved her.

The Nine told her everything she wanted to hear.

Cain stared at the fat profit spreadsheets on his computer, but did not see them. The donor party at St. Cocha University was sickening. The chancellor was a sycophant of the worst kind, a money grubbing vole of a woman. Yet he clapped along with everyone else when she praised the Kildares.

Then when he scraped the courage from the farthest corners of his heart to approach Fynn unveiled, she called him a murderer. She insulted him and he had to stand and take it.

She had no idea how powerful he was. Her ignorance was one of his few solaces. She would grovel in shame for it the day she understood how much she was going to need him. His patience for that day was thinner than ever before.