Helen sat up in bed, listening to the annoying blare of her alarm clock. The one night she actually wanted to stay in the Underworld, and she’d woken up. It was still dark, but even in the predawn gloom she could see the mess she’d made.
Jerry was going to kill her. No matter how much Kate pleaded with him that Helen had a rare “sleep disorder,” this time Jerry was actually going to murder her.
Her dad had this thing with conserving heat—like the house’s thermostat had a direct line to his psyche—and chilly gusts were already blasting directly through the gigantic hole she’d made in her window. Helen smacked herself on the forehead and fell back onto her mattress.
She was as good as grounded, that flying monstrosity had probably eaten Haircut, and it was all because Helen had to wake up at ugly-o’clock-in-the-morning to get to a track meet on the mainland.
High school sports are complicated for people who live on tiny islands. In order for island athletes to compete with other schools they have to travel by boat or by plane, and for Helen and the rest of her teammates, that meant getting up before the crack of dawn. Sometimes she really hated living on Nantucket.
Stifling a yawn and trying to push the image of Haircut dying a vicious death from her mind, Helen pulled herself out of bed. She duct-taped a blanket over her broken window, gulped down some instant oatmeal, and left for the island’s airport. Ironically, she flew there. But of course she couldn’t fly all the way to the mainland. Missing the plane and then showing up at the meet on time would raise all kinds of questions, so she did the responsible thing.
Landing a cautious distance away, she started jogging toward the tarmac just as the sky turned a shy pink. She saw Claire parking her car in the lot and ran over so they could go together to the waiting prop plane. Helen was excited to tell Claire about Haircut, but before she could open her mouth, Claire was rolling her eyes and grabbing Helen by the shoulders.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Claire mumbled in exasperation as she undid the misaligned buttons on Helen’s pesky jacket and then redid them correctly. “You look like a dyslexic five-year-old. Am I going to have to come over every morning and dress you now?”
“Hamilton!” Coach Tar shouted before Helen had a chance to think up a reply, let alone tell Claire what had happened the night before. “You’re sitting with me. We need to talk strategy.”
“I have something to tell you,” Helen blurted out to Claire as she backpedaled toward Coach. “I saw someone there, you know, last night.” Claire’s eyes widened hopefully as Helen got dragged away.
The rest of the flight, Coach blabbed excitedly about how Helen should draft this runner and then pull out in front of that runner—all useless advice considering that if she wanted to she could break the sound barrier. Helen half listened and tried to not worry too much about Haircut.
He was big, tall, and powerfully built, and he looked like he knew what he was doing with that long dagger he had been using to defend himself. Helen tried to convince herself that he was probably fine, but she wasn’t entirely convinced.
Whoever Haircut was, he certainly looked like a Scion. But maybe he was just a six-foot-four, muscle-y, unbelievably good-looking mortal with a great smile. And if that was the case, the poor thing was definitely dead. No mortal could fight off that harpy.
All morning, Helen tried to find an opportunity to talk to Claire, but she didn’t have a chance. She ran her first race, trying not to win it outright, but she was distracted, wondering whether or not it was possible to get killed in the land of the dead. The useless internal debate ruined her concentration, and she ended up running way too fast. Helen pretended to pant when she realized that all of the spectators were staring at her with their mouths hanging open. All except one.
Zach Brant didn’t look the slightest bit surprised as Helen ran past at jackrabbit speed. In fact, he looked almost bored. Helen had no idea what Zach was doing at the meet—he’d never come to one before. From the way his eyes seemed to be glued to her, Helen could only assume he had come to watch her, but she had no idea why. There had been a time when Helen would have assumed Zach was watching her because he had a crush on her, but that time was long gone. Lately, it seemed like he wanted nothing to do with her.
Helen won her race, then she cheered while Claire finished one of her own before they finally met up by the triple-jump sand strip.
“So what happened?” Claire puffed, still winded from running.
“I saw . . .” Helen broke off. “Let’s go over there,” she continued, pointing to an empty expanse of field at the edge of the track. There were a lot of people milling around, and Zach was standing a bit too close.
By this point, Helen was nearly bursting to tell Claire what she had seen. While they walked she whispered under her breath, “I saw a person. A living person.”
“But, I thought you were the only one who can go down there in your body—not just as a spirit.”
“Me too! But last night there was this boy. Well, not a boy. I mean he was ginormous. A guy, around our age, I guess.”
“What was he doing down there?” Claire asked. She didn’t sound convinced that Helen had really seen someone.
“Getting his ass handed to him by a harpy?” Helen said. “But the night before last, he pulled me out of the quicksand. One of his arms is all shiny, like it’s covered in gold.” Claire looked at her dubiously, and Helen realized just how nuts she sounded. “Do you think I’m going crazy? Sounds crazy, right? And it’s not even supposed to be possible.”
“Do you mind?” Claire said suddenly. She glared over Helen’s shoulder at Zach, who was following them. “Private conversation here.”
Zach shrugged, but he didn’t walk away. Claire took his defiance as a challenge. She yelled at him to go away in her most authoritative voice, but he wouldn’t budge. Eventually, she had to take Helen’s hand and steer her toward the edge of the open field where the woods began. Zach couldn’t very well follow them without Claire causing a scene about it, but he didn’t turn away, either. He just kept staring at them as Claire dragged Helen into the scrub.
“Is this necessary?” Helen asked as she straddled a scratchy bush and untangled the end of her braid from the brittle, lichen-covered branch of a small birch tree.
“Zach’s been acting really weird lately, and I just don’t want him to see us,” Claire said with narrowed eyes.
“You mean he didn’t go away when you ordered him to, and you dragged me in here because you don’t want him to win,” Helen corrected with a chuckle.
“That too. Now tell me exactly what happened,” Claire urged, but they were interrupted again, this time by the sound of rustling leaves. It came from deeper inside the woods.
A large man stepped out of the undergrowth. Helen shoved Claire behind her and stepped toward the intruder, ready for a fight.
“Don’t you knuckleheads know that some seriously sketchy men hang out in the woods around high school track meets?” the blond giant said testily.
“Hector!” Helen gasped with relief and jumped into his open arms.
“What’s up, cuz?” he said with a laugh and hugged her tight. Claire joined them and gave Hector a big squeeze before she pulled back and punched him on the chest.
“What are you doing here?” Claire demanded disapprovingly. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Relax, Five-Two,” Hector said as he broke eye contact and looked down, the smile on his face fading fast. “I spoke to Aunt Noel this morning. She told me none of the family would be here.”
“They aren’t, and we’re really glad to see you,” Helen said quickly, giving Claire a little pinch for being so insensitive.
“Of course we’re glad to see you!” Claire exclaimed as she rubbed her pinched arm. “I didn’t mean it like that, Hector, you know that. How’ve you been?”
“Not important,” he said with a shake of his head. “I want to know how you are. And how Luke is doing after last week,” he asked in a low voice.
Helen tried not to flinch, but it was impossible.
“It’s bad,” Claire said sadly.
“Yeah, I know. I talked to Aunt Noel. I still can’t believe Luke would do something like that.” Hector’s voice was harsh, but he looked at Helen sympathetically.
Helen tried to concentrate on Hector’s pain instead of her own. She had lost Lucas, but Hector had lost his whole family. He was so worried about them that he was willing to wait all day crouched in the bushes outside a stupid track meet just to make contact with someone relatively close to them.
Apart from Daphne, whom he barely knew, Hector was alone. Helen realized that of all the people in her life, Hector most likely had the best idea of what she was going through, which was strange since they’d only recently stopped disliking each other.
“How’s my mother?” Helen blurted out, needing to end the sad silence they had all fallen into. Hector gave Helen a cagey look.
“She’s . . . busy” was all he would say about Daphne before he turned back to Claire and changed the subject.
Hector normally told everyone what he thought, whether they wanted to hear it or not. The way he’d dodged Helen’s question made her wonder exactly what her shady mother was up to. Helen had tried to get in touch with Daphne a few times in the past three weeks, but she hadn’t gotten a response. Maybe her mother was purposely avoiding her? Helen didn’t get a chance to dig deeper. Hector was too occupied teasing Claire about how she seemed to be getting shorter. But just as the two of them began to shove each other playfully, an ominous darkness enveloped the woods.
Helen shivered involuntarily and looked all around in a panic. Even though she knew he was dead, she could almost feel Creon reaching up from the grave to try to pull her down into that horrible darkness.
Hector noticed the change in the light just as Helen did. He put out a hand and grabbed Claire protectively by the shoulder. Helen caught Hector’s eye. They both recognized this eerie phenomenon.
“A Shadowmaster?” Helen whispered. “I thought Creon was the only one!”
“So did I,” Hector whispered back, his eyes darting all over the place, looking for a target. But the darkness was like a curtain, closing them in. They couldn’t see farther than a few feet in front of them. “Take Claire and run.”
“I won’t leave you—” Helen began.
“RUN!” Hector screamed as a flashing sword cut through the black curtain and arced down on top of him.
Hector knocked Claire out of the way as he bent backward and to the side like a gymnast in midleap. The bronze blade whistled past his chest and buried itself a full foot into the half-frozen forest floor. Hector kicked savagely into the encroaching shadows, sending his attacker flying through the air and leaving the sword lodged in the ground.
In one fluid motion, Hector raised his torso back to vertical and claimed the sword for himself. As he yanked it out of the ground he used the grip-stop-go momentum of the freed blade to slash across the chest the next figure that appeared out of the gloom, all the while moving faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s heart.
Helen felt metal shatter against her cheek, and in the crippled light she saw the bright fragments of an arrowhead bursting into a dandelion shape under her right eye. She recoiled instinctively from the impact even though she was completely unhurt, and backpedaled until she bumped up against Claire’s leg with her heels.
Helen stood guard in front of her mortal friend. Stunned and breathless, Claire couldn’t stand yet, and she certainly couldn’t run. Helen planted her feet in between Claire and the attackers and called up her lightning.
The sound of a bullwhip snapping and the stale taste of ozone filled the air as light branched out from Helen’s hands, creating a latticed wall of electricity that protected her and Claire. The unnatural darkness created by the Shadowmaster fell back in the blue blaze and no fewer than a dozen armed Scions were revealed. Where had they all come from? Helen wondered frantically. How had so many crept up on them?
At the center and to the back of the phalanx, in the place Hector had taught Helen was reserved for infantry officers, Helen caught a brief glimpse of a terrifying, alien face. It, whatever it was, had red eyes. It looked directly at her and then fell back until it was again covered in the Shadowmaster’s gloom.
“Too many!” Hector grunted as he fought off two more men.
“Behind us!” Helen yelled as she spun around and saw that four fighters were flanking them. She sent out a bolt of weak lightning—just enough to stun and not to kill them. Unfortunately for Helen, holding back her power required way more energy than just letting the bolts go.
Helen felt dizzy. She forced her eyes to focus as three of the four men fell convulsing to the ground. The fourth kept coming toward her. She had used up most of the water in her body, which was already slightly dehydrated from running a distance race, and she didn’t have enough left to create another controlled bolt. She could still create one that would kill them all, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that.
Jumping over Claire, who was still struggling to get her wind back, Helen threw a punch at the remaining Scion. Helen had never been good at striking, and her punch barely got his attention. He hit her back hard, knocking her down to the ground on top of Claire and making her ears ring.
A dark shape streaked down from the sky, landed on top of Helen’s attacker, and sent him careening into the trees. It was Lucas. Helen’s breath caught at the sight of him. How could he have gotten here so quickly? she wondered frantically. Lucas looked down at Helen, his face impassive, and then threw himself against the main group of attacking Scions.
Helen heard Hector bellow, and saw that several men were trying to fit chains and thick metal cuffs onto his arms and legs. She scrambled over to help him wrestle the bindings off while Lucas dealt with the fighters who were left standing. In a blinding blur of movements, Lucas had disarmed and injured two men before Helen even made it to Hector’s side.
Seeing that his small army was no match for Helen, Hector, and Lucas, the creepy leader of the phalanx made a shrill chittering noise, and the onslaught ended as quickly as it began. The wounded were hiked up onto shoulders, weapons were retrieved, and the band of hit men dissolved into the trees before Helen could even brush the hair off her sweaty face.
Helen saw Lucas turn his back on them and stiffen. Hector put his hands to his temples and dug the heels of his hands into the sides of his head, as if he was trying to keep his skull from splitting in half.
“No, Hector! Don’t!” Claire yelled as she threw herself on top of him. She put her hands over his eyes and tried to block his sight so he wouldn’t see Lucas. Even with Claire nearly smothering him, Helen could see Hector’s face redden with rage.
Lucas was shaking with the effort to hold back, but finally, he gave in. He had a crazed look in his eyes as he spun around to face Hector. The Furies had him, and they were telling him to kill his cousin or die trying.
“Please, Lucas, go! Go!” Helen rasped through her parched throat. She knew he had ordered her never to touch him again, but she didn’t care. She jumped up and put her hands on his shoulders, shoving him away from Claire and Hector.
Helen pounded on his chest, but Lucas couldn’t tear his eyes away from Hector. In his urgency to kill the Outcast, Lucas threw Helen to the ground hard, and she cried out as she twisted her wrist on the uneven underbrush.
Hearing her shout of pain seemed to shock Lucas out of his frenzy. He looked down to see Helen on her knees, cradling her injured wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Before Helen could get to her feet, he jumped into the air and was gone from sight.
She stared after Lucas, his name hanging in the back of her throat, pinching it closed. She wanted to call him back to her and demand some kind of explanation. If Lucas hated her, why apologize? Why protect her in the first place?
“Len, snap out of it!” Claire yelled as she tugged on Helen’s arm. “There’s a fire!”
Helen dragged her eyes away from the bit of sky that Lucas had disappeared into and looked around while Claire hauled her to her feet. There was smoke billowing up from the dry brush and she could hear the first shouts of alarm as people made their way from the track meet over to the edge of the woods.
“Your lightning started it,” Hector explained briefly. “I have to go. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“What was that?” Helen asked, raising her voice to stop Hector from leaving.
“A battalion of the Hundred Cousins. Our dear uncle Tantalus wants revenge for Creon, and he won’t stop until I’m captured. I have no idea how they found me,” he replied, adding a foul curse at the end. “Stay safe, little cousin. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait!” Helen yelled after him, but just then several witnesses pushed through the trees to see to the fire, and Hector had to run away. “I was talking about that thing that was giving the orders . . .” She trailed off lamely as Hector’s back melted into the distance.
Helen let Claire make up the cover story. It was almost too easy for Claire to convince everyone that there had been a freak storm. Lots of witnesses had seen lightning flashes and “dark clouds” mysteriously covering the woods. All Claire needed to do was cast herself and Helen as innocent bystanders who just happened to be the first to arrive at the scene. Helen couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Zach grimace when Claire told her tall tale. She wondered whether Zach had seen the whole thing. But if he had, why didn’t he say anything?
On the flight home, Helen and Claire had plenty of time to get freaked out about what had happened. They couldn’t risk being overheard by one of the teammates, but they kept glancing over at each other with worried eyes. Neither of them wanted to be alone that night so they made plans for Claire to come and sleep over at Helen’s house.
As soon as Claire disembarked, she and Jason rushed to meet. He looked pale and tense, and they regarded each other with such obvious devotion it made Helen’s heart pinch.
“Luke didn’t know if you’d been injured or not,” Jason choked out as he reached inside Claire’s jacket. Under the cover of her coat, he ran his softly glowing Healer’s hands lightly over Claire’s arms and ribs, checking her for broken bones or internal bleeding. “He said you got knocked down by a Scion. . . .”
“She’s fine,” Helen said soothingly.
“Of course you’d think she’s fine. You don’t have any concept of how easy it is for her to get hurt. You’re impervious,” Jason snapped back at Helen, his voice rising slightly with every sentence.
“I’d never let anything happen . . .” Helen began incredulously, but Claire touched Helen’s arm and silenced her.
“I’m okay, Jason,” Claire said patiently as she reached toward him with her other hand. She held on to both Jason and Helen, as if she was trying to use her arms to bridge the gap between them.
It seemed that Jason put down a heavy burden as he nodded, finally accepting that Claire was safe, but as they turned to walk to Claire’s car, he glared at Helen, almost as if he didn’t trust her.
On the way to the parking lot, Claire repeated the conversation they’d had with Hector, but she couldn’t give Jason much information.
“I spent most of the time knocked on my ass. It was over really fast, though,” she finished sheepishly.
“There was this creepy commander,” Helen told Jason. “He didn’t look right.”
“Luke never said anything about that,” Jason said with a shake of his head.
“Maybe he didn’t see him,” Helen said, unable to bring herself to say Lucas’s name. “There was also a Shadowmaster there.”
“We know,” Jason said with a worried glance over at Claire. “Lucas mentioned that.”
“What was Lucas doing there, anyway?” Claire asked.
“He didn’t say,” Jason replied with a tired shrug. “Luke doesn’t seem to think he needs to explain himself to anyone anymore.”
“Is he okay?” Helen asked quietly. Jason pursed his lips.
“Sure,” he said, throwing up his hands like there was nothing else he could say, even if they both knew it wasn’t the literal truth.
“Are you going to be all right getting home alone?” Claire asked Helen when Jason left to go get his car. It took a moment for Helen to catch on, and when she did, she was stunned. Claire was ditching her for Jason.
“Hector said they were after him, not me. I’m not in any danger,” Helen said in a cold voice.
“Not exactly what I meant,” Claire said with raised eyebrows. Then she made Helen face her. “Hector is being hunted, and Jason’s going out of his head about it. He needs to talk to someone right now.”
Helen didn’t respond. She wasn’t about to say she was fine with Claire blowing off their plans when she wasn’t. She knew she was being childish, but she couldn’t stop herself. A big part of her wanted to say that she needed someone right now, too. Helen waited with Claire until Jason pulled up next to Claire’s car, but she didn’t say anything else. When they were gone she trotted toward a secluded area, looked around to make sure no one was watching her, and then took off and flew home.
Helen circled her house a few times, looking down at the empty widow’s walk. For just a moment, Helen let herself hope that Lucas would be up there, waiting for her to come home. It was almost as if she could feel him there, like his ghost was walking back and forth, scanning the horizon for her. Looking for the mast of her ship . . .
But as usual lately, she was all alone.
Helen landed in her yard, and went into the house. Jerry had left her a note and a rapidly cooling casserole. He and Kate were working late. It was delivery night, and that meant they would spend hours restocking the shelves and doing inventory. Helen stood in the middle of the kitchen with only one light on in the hall and listened to the house be empty. The silence was overwhelming.
Helen looked around at the dark kitchen and thought about the ambush that she had survived just hours earlier. It reminded her of the time she had been ambushed by Creon, right where she was standing. Lucas had come and saved her life. Then, afterward, he’d sat her on the counter and fed her honey. Helen pinched her eyes with her fingers until she saw pale blue spots and told herself that they hadn’t known then that they were cousins, so it was okay that she’d felt what she had. But she knew they were cousins now, so it wasn’t okay to relive it.
Helen couldn’t allow herself to stand around and think about Lucas. Standing still would lead to more thinking, more thinking would lead to hysterical crying, and Helen could not allow herself to cry before she slept or she would suffer for it in the Underworld.
Shutting off her memories, Helen marched upstairs and got ready for bed. All she wanted was someone to talk to before she laid her head down, but it seemed like no one was around anymore, not even Jerry and Kate.
Helen saw that her dad had replaced the blanket she had put over the hole in her window with a blue tarp and smiled to herself. He might not be around for Helen to talk to every moment of the day, but at least her father loved her enough to try to fix her messes. She checked the seal on the tape holding it down. It was on tight, but the room was still so cold Helen could see her breath. She climbed reluctantly into bed and pulled the miserable bed-wetter sheets up to her chin to keep in the heat.
Helen glanced around her room. The silence pounded in her ears and the walls spiraled in on her. She didn’t want to be the Descender anymore. For all her suffering she had learned nothing, and she was no closer to freeing the Rogues and the Outcasts from the Furies than she had been when she first descended. She was a failure.
Helen was at the end of her endurance. She was beyond tired, but she couldn’t let herself fall asleep in this condition. If she did, she didn’t know if she would ever have the strength to wake up again. She needed something, anything, to look forward to.
A fragment of a thought flashed across her mind’s eye—the sweet image of a strong hand that was open and ready to take hers. Behind that helping hand was a mouth that smiled as it said her name.
Helen didn’t just want a friend, she needed one. And she didn’t care if she had to go to hell to find him.
Automedon saw the Heir to the House of Atreus circle her house twice, staying high in the night sky before she landed in her yard. At first, he thought she stayed aloft because she had spotted him. He sank back into the neighbor’s bushes and took on the preternatural stillness that only a creature of nonhuman lineage could achieve. He knew the Heir was powerful and should not be underestimated. He hadn’t seen lightning like she had made during the battle in the woods in many years.
But like most modern Scions, she was oblivious to her true potential. None of these gifted infants knew that power was meant to be wielded. The strong should rule. That was what nature intended, from smallest microbe to the great leviathan. The weak die, and the strongest becomes queen of the nest.
Automedon willed the chitin in his skin to harden and hold fast until he realized that the Heir’s focus was not on him, and that he could relax his rigid outer camouflage.
The Heir was taking her time to land so she could look at the fenced-in platform on her roof. Strange, he thought, it was almost as if she expected someone to be up there, and yet he had never seen anyone use that platform in the three weeks he had been watching her. He made a mental note of her interest in the widow’s walk, trusting in his instinct that there was more to that place than met the eye.
She landed in the yard and looked over her shoulder, the moonlight catching her smooth cheek. Many years ago in a faraway country, Automedon had seen that same exquisite face, kissed by the same adoring moon, as it looked back over the ocean of blood that had been spilled to possess it.
The Heir went inside her house but turned on no lights. Automedon heard her pause and stand very still just inside the kitchen at the front. Her strange behavior made him wonder if one of the Hundred Cousins had been incited by their failure to seize the Outcast that afternoon to disobey Tantalus’s orders. Was one in the house? Automedon rose out of the bushes. The Heir was not to be touched, not yet. He took a step forward and heard her go upstairs. She went into the bathroom, turned on a light, and started washing up as if nothing was wrong. Automedon retreated back into his nest and listened.
He could hear the Heir lay down in her bed. Her breathing was elevated, almost as if she were frightened. Automedon extended the proboscis that lay under his human-looking tongue, sliding it out to taste her pheromones on the air. She was afraid, but there was more than just fear in her chemical signature. There were many conflicted emotions bubbling to the surface, changing her chemistry too quickly for Automedon to identify them clearly. The burden of her task was weighing heavily on her. He heard her sniff a few times, then finally she relaxed, and he heard her breathing turn into the slow rhythm of sleep. As she unlocked the portal, the unearthly cold of the Void sucked the last vestiges of warmth out of her room.
For a millisecond, her body vanished from this world altogether, but Automedon knew that it would reappear, like all the other Descenders’ had, alive and functioning and covered with the sterile dust of another world. She would lie unnaturally still then, and open her eyes hours later, only remembering that she had been in the Underworld for what, from her perspective, could have been ages.
The Heir might lie in the posture of sleep for hours, but after weeks of study, Automedon had learned that this Descender never truly rested. He had crept in, hung from her ceiling, and waited for the telltale movement of the eyes under the lids that signaled the deep, healing sleep that mortals need. But it never came.
Without true rest, each night she would grow weaker and weaker until the time came for his master to strike.
