The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

Fynn turned her full attention to the dying girl. She rubbed her hands together, then placed one on Karen’s neck and the other on her head. It had been eight years since she had last tried a healing. She hesitated for just a moment, then plunged in. With a few muttered lines of Gaelic, the room fell away. Light absorbed her vision, as if she were looking into the sun. She gripped the back of Karen’s neck until the writhing masses of virus began to shatter into fragments. Fynn’s hair lifted off her scalp. Energy flowed from her hands into Karen’s bloodstream until every bit of the mindless virus withered.

Karen gasped, her forehead already cooling under Fynn’s palm. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Have I been sleeping?”

The EMT crew burst in. They pushed Fynn to the side and took Karen away on a stretcher through a gauntlet of boozy kids with shamed faces. Someone cut the music and Fynn almost thanked the Goddess out loud for it.

“She was dying and you cured her,” Jasmine said. “Professor Kildare, you cured Karen.”

The students’ whispers echoed in the hall.
Professor Kildare is a witch.
Her mother and sister would be furious with her for this. She felt a twinge of regret, but just a twinge and it seemed to wave at her like an old friend. Diamond chips of anger cut her on the inside. She sure as hell wasn’t going to be afraid of her family, not after all she’d been through and everything she’d accomplished. Maybe she couldn’t help remembering her father’s horror stories, but she’d also earned a doctorate at twenty-two and worked as the lead researcher in immunology at St. Cocha University. Her courses were packed with students who were dying to have her for a professor. She made her own way now.

Fynn’s family did not rule her life anymore. She was nothing like the girl she was growing up in the Keep. Her family had no say in what she did. They lost that right eight years before when they failed to protect her from the demon virus that had sneaked past the gate. She squared her shoulders as she strode past the ambulance outside the dorm. Fynn’s mother hadn’t wanted to see her hurt, but she could not protect Fynn, and it was that weakness that Fynn could not forgive.

St. Cocha University sat on a forested hill, with the Pacific Ocean spread out below. The water looked like tempered steel from the distance. She loved to swim in the evening and surf in the morning. She’d forgotten how much the rush of making someone well was like riding the highest wave imaginable. She felt as if she could touch the pink ends of the setting sun and meet the emerging stars. She had forgotten that she was too powerful to be afraid of invisible stalkers, or her mother and sister, either. She had forgotten who she was.

Or maybe she had just forgotten how much fun it was to be a goddess.

Cain lived to watch Fynn. The flashing red ambulance lights bathed the wide planes of her face as she walked past the oblivious driver. Her wild hair fell down her back like molten bronze and her eyes seemed to shoot emerald sparks. She was so clearly an otherworldly creature. He could not fathom how the emergency guys let her pass without throwing themselves at her feet. How could they not fall to kneeling at the sight of her?

In the dorm parking lot, Fynn paused by her truck, shifting her weight from one boot to the other. She gazed in Cain’s direction, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing. He flinched, but her expression didn’t change. She glanced over her shoulder before climbing in.

She can’t see me.
Next to the life-force power of the goddess, his mother’s witch magic was a set of cheap tricks. The veiling spell was as crude as putting a paper bag over his head, but it worked well enough to hide him from Fynn’s sight. The time he stole to watch Fynn under the veiling spell was the only thing that kept him from putting a gun to his head.

The absurd old step side she drove sputtered down the hill toward the ocean. Cain followed in his Porsche, holding two fingers to the leather steering. When she belonged to him, she wouldn’t drive a beat-up truck. She wouldn’t need to drive. He touched the plastic barrel of the syringe in his pocket. He would give her everything she wanted. She would need for nothing, except the substance he kept in his pocket like a talisman.

Fynn didn’t go home right away. She stopped at the beach first, as he knew she would. From the safe distance of the dry sand, he watched as she shed her black boots, jeans, and halter. He held his breath as she dove into the waves. There were sharks this time of year, hunting along the shore. In the dark, they could mistake her for a seal.

For nearly an hour, he sat by Fynn’s discarded clothes, glancing at his phone every few minutes, the time flashing in its cold light. He grabbed hers from her jeans. He knew the passcode from weeks of following close enough to smell her perfume, or to feel her hair against his cheek. He found her number and programmed it into his own phone. It was nice to see her name in his list of contacts. It was another game he could play. Fynn Kildare was his friend. His girlfriend. His wife. Of course, he had her number in his list of contacts. She was the most important person in the world to him.

When she emerged, he stared at her body gleaming in the moonlight. Relief and desire broiled within him all at once, and he almost cried out. It took everything he had to stay rooted in place. He rolled the syringe between his fingers. A wrong move at the wrong time would ruin his plans, but he could hardly wait to take her. She put herself in such unnecessary danger. When she was his, they would live on the remotest of islands, but he would never allow her to do something as stupid as swim.

She shook the sand off her jeans. He was close enough to hear the denim brushing against her wet skin, to smell the salt in her hair. The rubber cap of the syringe slipped against his sweaty palm. If he pricked himself by mistake, he would be dead in hours. If he could manage to plunge the contents into Fynn’s neck, she would be his slave forever. His breath quickened. He could already feel her weight collapsing in his arms. The time had to be that instant.
Now.
He bit off the cap and raised the syringe above her shoulder.

His phone vibrated in his back pocket.

She whipped around, clutching her top to her chest. He bit his tongue to keep from cursing.
She can’t see me. She can’t see me.
He backed away, leaving her to study the darkness alone.

Safe in the driver’s seat, his hands shook over his phone. A text from his mother.
Need you at the office.
He cursed aloud this time, the last shreds of the witch’s spell falling off his shoulders like dandruff. Of course it was his mother calling, destroying his moment to take Fynn Kildare for his own. His mother destroyed everything.

He spit the rubber stopper out from between his teeth and recapped the syringe. His heart pounded as he gunned down the road toward the highway. It was okay, he told himself. He would have her. His mother had her own ideas about the timeline of the next couple of months. He had to be patient for just a while longer.

He cranked the stereo up on a classic Dionysus rock song, and lowered the windows to feel the wind in his hair. Everything would be okay. It had to be. He would have her as his own before long. His need for Fynn was stronger than anything he knew. His need was stronger than his mother and her cheap witch magic.

His need for Fynn was, in fact, stronger than the goddess herself.

A black SUV sat parked in front of Fynn’s house. Her foot itched to press on the gas and head for somewhere else to spend the night. Not for the first time, she wished she lived further away from the Keep. A guard dressed in a black suit waved her down as she approached. No escape. He met her in the driveway.

“My lady,” he said. Another disciple wearing an earpiece held a post at the door. There would be at least two more on the back balcony. Her mother always did feel the need for bodyguards. Fynn ignored the one holding his arm for her. She could walk by herself. He bowed his head before turning heel with military precision.

Annoyance rose in Fynn’s blood like mercury. She walked into her own house to find her mother and sister sitting in the front room, heads bent together. They had taken the time to light dozens of her candles, and to make tea that steamed in cups on the low table in front of the sofa. The two of them looked like a pair of butterfly wings in their silk tunics and flowing skirts. The scent of burning sage rose from their fire-colored hair. Her father had surely been telling stories around the hearth that night, terrifying everybody with his endless apocalypse talk.

Fynn’s sister Liadan jumped from her seat without a greeting. “Have you lost your mind?” she said. “Mom said no healings.”

“You don’t know the whole story,” Fynn said.

“I know you healed somebody,” Lia said. “I could feel it.”

“I’m sorry,” Fynn said.
Not sorry.
“Did I upset the Force?”

“This isn’t a joke. Can you at least tell me no one saw you?”

“One person saw me.” Poor sweet Jasmine. If only her poetry were as delicate as her thin little wrists, it would have been so much easier to listen to.

Fynn’s mother remained quiet, the candlelight dancing on the hollows of her face. In one shadow, she looked ancient; in a flicker, she appeared as young as Fynn and twice as fierce. Fynn cut her eyes away. It was easier to keep her sense of humor if she didn’t look at her mother. The woman claimed to be over two hundred years old. She’d been around long enough to gather great power in her human form.

“One person isn’t bad,” Lia said. “At least we can control the damage.”

“Then there were the twenty or so kids who saw the paramedics take the girl away.” Fynn couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter how powerful they were. Her family made her perverse.

“Oh, Fynn,” Lia said. “This is so not okay.”

“What was I supposed to do? Let her die?”

“Call 911, like a normal person.”

“She would have been dead before they got her to the hospital,” Fynn said. “Trust me.”

“I wish I could.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

The windows rattled. Lia counted to ten under her breath, as if she were the one who needed patience. It was too much for Fynn.

“It’s not like they burn girls like us at the stake anymore,” Fynn said. “Besides, this is St. Cocha. The town of peace and love, man. If they find out what I am, the worst they’ll do is make me their queen.”

“You think this is funny.” her mother said, matter-of-factly. Her voice was the smell of vanilla and spices and redwood forests. It was a fireplace on a snowy night, raging with flames that could either warm the room or catch the whole house on fire. “But you’ve exposed us. There is more at stake here than you realize.”

“The end times are coming,” Lia said. “Fighting will make us weak. You need to come home to the Keep.”

The end times. Fynn didn’t know how Lia could take it. Her sister hardly ever left the Keep and she was as zealous as a fresh convert.

“The Keep is not my home,” Fynn said. But even as she said it, she knew the truth was much more complicated than that.

“Virus, was it?” her mother asked. An Irish lilt rocked the words in her mouth like smooth stones. Fynn’s heart ached with homesickness. Resentment. Love.

“Meningitis.” Fynn knew Lia and their mother would feel the hands-on healing through the strange connection between them. It was stupid to think she could get away with it. She hated them and she loved them. Even in the short time she’d had with her mother and sister in her front room, she felt the ties between them knitting together, adding to the power of the Three. But she also felt bound in a sticky web she could not escape. She could never feel at ease with her family. She couldn’t even just feel one thing at a time with them. When she was with her mother and sister, she erupted into her own private mosh pit of emotion.

“There are demon forces gathering strength,” her mother said, her warning carrying the crackling of wildfire. “I know you have decided not to heed the prophecies, but that doesn’t make them not true. You are in grave danger outside the Keep.”

“I was in grave danger inside the Keep,” Fynn said. “You couldn’t protect me there, and you can’t protect me here.” Fynn thought of the invisible stalker in the café and after she emerged from the water. She just wanted a hot shower, a cozy blanket, and some time alone. Maybe a glass of wine to help her forget the noise at the beach, the flash of terror that told her that the evil presence had returned right before it just as suddenly disappeared.

“Someone was following you?” her sister asked, forever on the edge of panic. “Was it an unhuman?”
Get out of my head.
Fynn struggled to control her thoughts, her tone of voice, the direction of the whole conversation. But Lia’s eyes shone in the candlelight. She turned to their mother. “She can’t see why she must return,” she said. “It’s time you told her the truth.”

Mother Brigid grabbed Lia’s hand. “Sit down, daughters,” she said.

Lia sank to the couch beside their mother, but Fynn took the hard chair as far away as possible. Lia’s tears made Fynn want to punch her in the face. She turned to the window, to the moon kissing the water on the horizon. She expected a lecture about the power of the Three, some newly-channeled prophecy about the demon apocalypse. Her family’s urgent truths didn’t have anything to do with her life in St. Cocha.

“Daughter. Look at me,” Brigid said.

“Look at yourself,” Fynn said. Lia gasped. Fynn knew that no one spoke to Mother Brigid the way she did since her infection. Thorns covered her since then and she liked it that way. “This is ancient history to me, do you understand? Whatever it is you are about to tell me - I don’t care about it.”

“Daughter.”

Despite her resistance, Fynn’s mother pulled her in like the quiet moon did with the tide. In her mother’s eyes, purple windflowers bloomed like a galaxy of stars in the expanse of an endless meadow. Fynn saw the craters of the moon, the lining of the planets, the umbilical twinings of a million babies. There stretched hundred-mile desert saltpans, snowcapped mountains, and beyond that, an infinite sky.