The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free

You
are
nature,” Mother Brigid said.
    “Please come home with us,” Lia pleaded. “The war is coming and we need you to lead our armies. We need you to defend us.”
    Fynn’s temper flared and she did not hold it back. The guards outside ducked, as the windowpanes exploded with the concussive power of Fynn’s rage. The glass fell in shards onto the deck of the balcony, clattered down the bluff below.
    “Get out of my house,” Fynn said. “Or you will see exactly how mean you’ve made me.”
    Brigid stood slowly enough to show that she was not afraid. Electricity shot from the ends of Fynn’s hair. Lia reached, as though to touch her, but their mother stopped her hand.
    “The Triple Goddess is who you are,” Brigid said. “You must come back to us, my daughter. The demons are already here among us. It isn’t just us who need you. You need us, as well.”
    Fynn threw open the front door, though she stood nowhere near it. The guards called for them from the porch, too afraid to step inside. Her mother and sister went out, her mother’s head regal, her sister’s bowed and weeping.
    She listened to the SUV start and drive away. She slumped to the floor and pushed her face into the couch. It still smelled of sage and fire. She yelled curses until her anger shook the walls and rattled the hanging crystals against the empty window frames.

5. The Good Son
    Cain waited in the cold room. He shot the right sleeve of his Armani suit to see his watch. Everyone else in his company used their phones for the time. When he wasn’t sitting on a beach in the dark, he was an old-fashioned man. He liked an analog watch with a leather band.
    His mother was nine hours late. She called him to the office and then wasn’t there when he arrived. It didn’t surprise him, but still, he didn’t dare stay away when she called. She demanded strict obedience. If she had been there and he kept
her
waiting...he shuddered. How she would make him pay.
    He hated the office, with its industrial blue carpet and soundproof walls. There were no windows to the outside. Sometimes he would endure entire days without once seeing the sun. Picture windows lined two of the facing walls, but they only opened to two gymnasium-sized rooms below.
    The west side looked down at the pharmaceutical factory floor, where a handful of techs worked an assembly line. Each pill that poured out of the finishers represented money on top of money. Cain Pharmaceuticals generated pills to take for pep, pills to mellow out, and pills to treat symptoms of asthma, symptoms of high blood pressure, and symptoms of cancer. They didn’t develop cures at Cain Pharmaceuticals. Cures would put them out of business. The money was in relief of symptoms.
    Cain Pharmaceuticals was in its seventh year of relief peddling. The family business was thriving. Cain’s mother had been right about getting into drugs. His mother was always right when it came to money.
    The east-side floor told a different story. The space was empty as a cavern, except for three gurneys holding three young men in comas, attached to machines and tubes. They were in the deepest of unconscious sleeps and had been for three years. They were barely alive, his brothers.
    Three women attended them twenty-four hours a day. They wore pure white scrubs. It was an aesthetic issue for Cain’s mother. She needed everything in that room to be white. The floors and walls were painted the same blinding white as the nurses’ uniforms and the sheets over his brothers’ bodies. Cain would never let
her
know it, but he hated looking into that room. When she wasn’t around, he pretended it didn’t exist.
    He poked his head into the hall to make sure she wasn’t coming. When he was certain he was alone, he opened a computer file marked
Real Estate.
Adding to this file inspired him. A good fifteen minutes poring through the pictures kept him motivated to stay the course with his crazy family.
    Without his private dream, he